03/18 ISSUE 001

Connecting the global

innovation community

MARKETING BIG DATA STARTUPS

Are you ready for GDPR? How to hire a data scientist Focus on: innovation in Singapore

Blockchain Startups
TO

WATCH OUT FOR

Insights from: 1- Levi Strauss & Co

2- World Vision International
1 2 3 4 5 3- A Walk On Water
4- Wework
5- Uber
Foreword •
EDITORS LETTER
S
teve Jobs once famously
said, "You can't just ask
customers what they
want and then try to give that to
James Ovenden them. By the time you get it built,
Editor they'll want something new."
The need for innovation today is
greater than ever. We live in a culture obsessed with data, one in
which all organizations can access real time insights of what their
customers want. But understanding what they want right now
isn't enough. You have to understand what they are going to want
before they know it themselves, and work out how to provide it for
them before someone else does.
Today, we stand on the precipice of a new age, one in which
technologies such as AI and blockchain are helping individuals and
organizations achieve both these objectives. Innovation is no longer
the preserve of individual geniuses, the Elon Musks of this world
with their hyperloops and colonies on Mars. While we might not all
be thinking of new ways to make other planets habitable, today,
everyone has the tools to innovate. We just need to find them.
With Innovation Quarterly (IQ), we have drawn from the
Innovation Enterprise's community for insights from the world's
foremost experts on how to flourish during these times, to create a
space where thought leaders from best-in-class organizations can
share cross-industry solutions for the everyday challenges they face
and inspire new ideas. We look at disruption not as something to
survive, but as something to embrace.
The next quarter alone will bring many challenges, particularly the
EU's incoming data regulations, GDPR (General Data Protection
Regulations). GDPR will impact any organization using the personal
data of EU citizens, regardless of where they are in the world,
yet many remain profoundly unprepared. Indeed, in one recent
survey from enterprise data management firm, Solix, two-thirds of
respondents said they didn’t even know if individuals’ personal data
Contributors
Editor: James Ovenden Deputy Editor: Charlie Sammonds Assistant Editor: Caitlin Stanway-Williams Assistant
Editor: Efe Otokiti Contributors: Vin Clancy, Luke Bilton, Kelsey Taylor Art Director: Oliver Godwin-Brown IQ
2
could be purged entirely from their systems.
In this issue, we look at how organizations
are preparing for the data regulations and
what you need to do if you are to avoid
having to pay some substantial fines.
Another of the biggest stories of the last
year has been the rise of blockchain and
cryptocurrency. Many have become pos-
itively evangelical about the technology's
potential, to the point where it has become
a real struggle to see through the hype, to
see the bear coming at you through the
trees. In this issue, we look at 50 of the
most interesting blockchain startups and
examine how they are paving the way for
the technology to disrupt industries across
the board.
Also in this issue, we talk to Uber’s Machine
Learning Data Science Manager about
how the ride-sharing giant is using machine
learning and building out its capabilities,
review the best marketing automation
software, and host panel discussions with
our experts on topics ranging from how to
integrate innovation into strategic planning
to the future of data visualization.
We are entering a brave new world, one
filled with hazards and potentially disorient-
ing change, but also new opportunities. If
innovation is to flourish, businesses across
industry verticals need to work together.
Collaboration is now more important than
ever, and insights can come from the most
unexpected of places. Hopefully you'll find
them here.
manifesto I N N O V AT I O N Q U A R T E R LY

Our 8 rules for innovation

There are no hard and fast rules for innovation. It varies from organ-
ization to organization - even those operating within the same field.
However, there are a number of key tenets that we believe to be vital
if you are to be successful
Collaborate constantly
Innovation rarely involves a lightbulb
moment, regardless of what cartoons may
have you believe. The truth is that it is an
incremental process involving the discovery
of an insight, then engineering a solution,
and then the transformation of an industry
or field. That’s almost never achieved by
one person or even within one organization.
You have to be ready to leverage other
people’s assets.
Test your ideas
With the amount of data now at our dispos-
al and the raft of technologies to analyze
them, the risks around introducing a new
product or process are significantly less
because we are able to understand if they
are failing so much quicker. Those looking
to grow out their data teams and hire the
best possible talent should look to page 12
for our guide to hiring data scientists.
Align innovation with your business
strategy
The tricky thing about disruptive innovations
is that they rarely fit into existing business
models and so the value they create isn’t
immediately clear. Innovation does not 'just
happen', there needs to be a plan in place
that all areas of the business are aware of
and working towards. James Millar, Director
of Partnerships at MassChallenge UK,
notes that, "The best strategies include
reshaping the current organizational culture
to be more innovative across teams and
the organization as a whole and working
towards long-term value add back into
the company." For more insights from
strategy leaders, see our panel discussion
on page 22.
Look outside your industry for in-
spiration or you won't find it
In our interview with Dr. Osemeke Mosin-
di, Digital Innovation Lead at HSBC, on
page 23, he says, "I strongly believe that
as innovators we can learn a lot from other
industries. Our job is to join the ‘dots’ when
we see a pattern emerging, and the more
diverse the experiences we expose our-
selves to, the better the chances of joining
more ‘dots’."
You are doomed to failure if you simply try
and copy your competition. Furthermore,
great innovation rarely occurs within one
field of expertise. It is almost invariably the
product of synthesis across domains. So
remember to constantly be on the lookout
for new ideas everywhere you can.
Don't pay attention to what your
customers want now, what they
WILL want is what you need to
know
As Henry Ford (reportedly) said, “If I had
asked people what they wanted, they
would have said faster horses.” Innovating
when it comes to new products does not
mean providing what they want now, it
relies on what they are going to want in
the future. We are now able to predict the
way customer behavior is moving with
remarkable accuracy thanks to machine
learning algorithms applied to the reams of
data we have collected. We've outlined 5
questions you need to answer before intro-
ducing machine learning to your enterprise
on page 20.
Don't take what you already have
for granted - remember that evolu-
tion can be as good as revolution
Everyone wants that big idea, and they
are often willing to destroy lines of their
business that are currently successful to
get it. Google's 70/20/10 rule is a good one
to follow - focus 70% of your resources in
improving existing technology, 20% toward
adjacent markets, and 10% on completely
new markets.
Be an early adopter
If you want to be a company that embraces
innovation, it’s important to practice what
you preach. With technologies like AI and
blockchain set to tear industries apart over
the next decade, you need to start con-
sidering how you can integrate these into
your business. On page 24, we look at 50
startups set to unleash disruption on their
industries that you can learn from.
Embrace diversity, without it failure
is more likely
Numerous studies have shown that a
diverse leadership team puts you in the
best position for innovation. At the recent
Women In Strategy Summit, Mariya Nuris-
lamova, Co-Founder and CEO, Scentbird
discussed the challenges of raising funds
as a female entrepreneur. See page 40 for
more event insights.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:

INTERVIEWS with Hugh Williams, Machine Learning Data Science Manager at Uber, Craig Buzkho, Strategy Leader & Advisor at World Vision
International, and Cindy Mallory, co-chair of the blockchain committee at the VR/AR Association PANEL DISCUSSIONS on what's next for data
visualization and utilizing machine learning to its full potential GUIDE to preparing for GDPR FOCUS on Singapore as an innovation hub REVIEWS
of marketing automation software IQ

3
news •

Q1 RECAP
Headlines from Q1

Apple Inc. Snapchat US falls out Facebook in- Musk Gets

cuts out Releases of the top 10 troduces 3D Go-Ahead for
cobalt mid- Controversial most inno- content to its Hyperloop
dlemen Update vative coun- News Feed Between DC
tries. and New
York City.
According to people Users were up The social giant
familiar with the in arms as the The US dropped out rolled out support
matter, Apple is photo-sharing of the top 10 in the for the indus- Entrepreneur Elon
cutting out the company rolled 2018 Bloomberg try-standard gLTF Musk's infrastruc-
middle men to out its redesigned Innovation Index for 2.0 file format for ture firm The Boring
ensure it will have app. More than 1.2 the first time. South Facebook 3D posts, Company received a
enough of the key million people have Korea and Sweden which let users permit to start work
battery ingredient, signed a petition on retained their No. 1 interact with a digital on a Hyperloop
amid industry fears Change.org called and No. 2 rankings, object from all sides transport link in the
of a shortage driven "Remove the new while Singapore in Facebook's US Northeast, after
by the electric Snapchat Update". leapt above News Feed. By gaining verbal gov-
vehicle boom. Snap CEO Evan European econ- supporting the ernment approval
Spiegel said, “It’ll omies Germany, industry-standard last summer. The
take time for people Switzerland, and format, Facebook technology would
to adjust, but for Finland into third is linking 3D posts see travelers move
me using it for a place. to VR while also between the cities
couple months I feel enhancing the in just 29 minutes,
way more attached quality of 3D posts. with stop offs in
to the service.” DC, Baltimore,
Whether that's true Philadelphia, and
remains to be seen. New York City.

4
Surveys from Q1
In Appian's “The CMO Survey of top
A survey by The 2018 Digital marketers predicts
Boston Consulting Transformation that combined
Group (BCG) In a Lucidity survey, 82% of respondents Readiness Survey”, Advisory firm spend on the likes
found that 79% of said they felt the primary reason why their 82% said they can’t NewVantage of digital marketing,
self-defined strong organization does not innovate is because attract and retain Partners' survey martech platforms
innovators reported people are too busy reacting to day-to-day the software engi- of Fortune 1000 and marketing an-
they have properly challenges. Only 38% of respondents felt neers they need and C-suite executives alytics will increase
digitized innovation their organization was really taking devel- 72% don’t believe found that 63.4% by 6.5% over the
processes, while opment seriously and doing it well. The they can scale have appointed a next year while
only 29% of weak rest were frustrated that innovation was to keep up with Chief Data Officer, marketing research
innovators made the discussed as being important yet no real business demand in compared to just and intelligence will
same claim. steps were being taken to drive it. the coming years 12% in 2012 rise 3.9%

Graphs from Q1
Is Bitcoin's
slump just
a January
thing?

28. Dec 4. Jan 11. Jan 18. Jan

Source data: CoinDesk

Users flee
Facebook

5
 DIGITAL MARKETING

Ask The Experts

We put your questions to digital marketing experts to how they’d
approach some of the challenges you’re facing. If you are look-
ing for advice around an issue you’re having, send them to us at
jovenden@theiegroup.com

I’m just getting started in my content How can I tailor my content for different
marketing journey. What advice would social media platforms?
you have?
Michael Eisenreich, Global Head Of Meg Ryan, Senior Director of
Content, Creative And Digital Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Atlanta Hawks
Bloomberg

Our output varies from channel to channel. We know that fans

I think it's important to start out by focusing on a few specific
audiences where there can be a measurable impact and where
there is already a well of content. It's also a good idea to look for
areas where there is the right support internally across marketing,
sales, product, etc. and everyone involved knows that it will take
some time to get results. Overall, it's important to integrate content
marketing efforts into the overall marketing mix - connecting
with marketing events and campaigns - and not treat them all as
separate activities.
consume content differently based on the platform, and we always
start with the fan experience in mind. With that in mind, we vary
our content based on how our fans interact with the platform, and
the type of content that performs best on that platform. Our plans
for each channel take into account: type of content (i.e. video,
text, photo, etc), subject of content, time of day, frequency of post,
desired result, and amplification. We do not look at our channels
in silos. Instead, we look at social as part of our overall customer
experience. This helps us identify opportunities to co-promote
content or reward fans with unique content on a specific platform.

How should I be assessing the success of my

social campaigns? How do I personalize consumer
engagement?

Sean Swentek, Chief Marketing Officer,

A Walk On Water Su Jella, CRM & Digital Marketing
Manager, Dulux

When it comes to judging social channel success, audience size

is an important metric for understanding your market penetration,
but its growth is often mistakenly focused on at the detriment of
connecting with passionate brand supporters.
Engagement as a percentage of audience size (and reach) is a
much more dependable social success metric, cluing you into how
well you’re connecting with your audience around content that they
find valuable. The most valuable social channel KPI is being able to
prove the ROI of your social marketing efforts.
I harness data from Rewards programs that deliver targeted cam-
paigns based on customer purchases and Rewards/Redemptions
behavior. Promotional offers and personalized content to custom-
ers are targeted to customers based on their data and behavior
in the Rewards program. Video marketing is an incredible way to
create personalized experiences for customers. One of the tactics
I’ve used is to create personalized videos to retain customer loyalty
by providing “human” data to customers that show the value
they’ve added to trading with us. For example:

6
 digital marketing • q&a

Joe Bloggs, you shopped with us 41 times in 2017 at 20 stores,

with your favorite store being in Springvale, spending an average of
$1000 with us. To celebrate your loyalty Joe, we would like to you
offer you a gift card for the New Year valued at $300.
Top 5 Most Innovative
A simple, but insightful piece of communication that is relevant and
individualistic to Joe creates a personalized and valued relationship.
In... Pharma
By R&D Spend
Joe knows that we know him and we appreciate his loyalty with us.

1
How do you maintain brand loyalty and
meaningful engagement in the over- Switzerland
crowded digital space? R&D Expense: $11.35bn
Toal Rev: $51.82bn
% of Rev spent on R&D: 21.91%

Bob Purcell, Chief Marketing Officer at 2

Purity Cosmetics, 100% PURE

United States
Make sure that you have an amazing user experience. The CEO R&D Expense: $10.12bn
and everyone else needs to put themselves in their customer’s Toal Rev: $39.81bn
shoes as a human being. Here’s an example. At SoFi, a San % of Rev spent on R&D: 25.43%
Francisco student lending refinance company, when one of their
members loses their job SoFi immediately offers a resume and
career consulting resource. Also, SoFi has customer parties for 3
their customers to get to know each other since many of their
customers are at similar life stages. Switzerland
R&D Expense: $9.57bn
Toal Rev: $49.39bn
% of Rev spent on R&D: 19.38%

New technology adoption and transforming

staff practices can be a tricky process - what 4
tips do you have to make this a success? United States
R&D Expense: $9.10bn
Toal Rev: $71.89bn
John Barnes, CMO/Vice President of % of Rev spent on R&D: 12.65%
Marketing, Sunburst Shutters & Window
Fashions

5
Walk before you run. Test whenever you can. But also, don’t wait
for all your competition to get on board before you do. There are United States
always ways to ease into a technology without damaging your R&D Expense: $7.87bn
image or brand. IQ Toal Rev: $52.82bn
% of Rev spent on R&D: 14.90%
Source data: PwC

7
INterview • big data

How Uber Is Using Machine Learning

We talk to Hugh Williams, Head of Applied Machine Learning at the ride-sharing giant

Hugh Williams leads the Applied Machine Learning group at Uber, which forms part of a larger central Ma-
chine Learning (ML) org that encompasses several teams working on ML platforms. One of the teams, Applied
Models (AML), focuses on bringing technically-advanced approaches (i.e. Deep Learning, semi-supervised
learning, etc) to production in order to solve Uber’s toughest problems.

Before Uber, Hugh spent time building ML solutions at Google and Capital One with a primary focus on devel-
oping behavioral models and intervention strategies to steer those behaviors.

How important would you say Natural Language able to detect trends in our support tickets,
Processing (NLP) is to the future of AI? flag issues in rider-driver reviews, or summa-
rize findings whenever we do in-app or one-off
Very important. It’s one of the core areas for extracting informa- surveys. It’s of utmost necessity to hear what
tion out of unstructured data sources. Within the realm of text and they’re telling us and NLP is the only way to do
speech, rule-based approaches can only get you so far. Anyone it at scale.
who wants to analyze deeper than keyword analysis will need to
develop Natural Language Processing skills. A couple of other examples include looking at
whether the language we use in email com-
Now, I don’t want to be dismissive of simple hacks. You can learn a munications resonates with users and helps
hell of a lot with some well-built regex parsers, but any sort of ML- them understand or confuses them. NLP is
based system that is attempting to mimic (or at the very least learn also helpful in growing our support channels.
from) human behavior is going to require NLP. We have teams of specialists helping drivers
onboard over SMS and even more supporting
At a minimum, knowledge of TF-IDF, n-grams, and 'classical' NLP them through our customer support system
techniques in the domain of topic modeling are critical. But to really when an issue is reported through our in-app
push the boundaries, you need to learn how to leverage Deep or web-based help center. NLP helps us scale
Learning as a means of capturing the rich amount of information both of these channels by letting us know
contained within the text. what the common issues are, so we can
develop tools that help our support teams
And is that what you guys are doing with NLP in provide better customer service for our drivers
Uber? by suggesting appropriate resolutions and
alternatives.
Not surprisingly, we’re using it to improve our communications with
our riders and drivers. For example, if you run a business wherein What do you think are the most
you collect unstructured feedback, you NEED to have ways of sum- important things organizations need
marizing what your users are saying. For Uber, that means being to remember to best position them-
selves to adopt machine learning?
And what do you think the biggest

“if you run a business

myth around AI and machine learn-
ing being propagated round your

wherein you collect

industry is?

unstructured feedback,
In my mind, the answer to both is: use-cases.
Before you even start building any model,

you NEED to have ways of

you HAVE to define upfront how it’s going to
be used and why that’s going to make the

summarizing what your users

experience better for a user. Whether my team
is building an NLP-based model for customer

are saying”
support, an anomaly detection system for
fraud, or a computer-vision model for a re-

8
search project, we sit right beside product/engineering to crystalize
how the model’s output will be consumed.

I cannot tell you how many times companies and teams make this TOP MACHINE LEARNING
mistake. A most common example you will see in the industry is INFLUENCERS TO FOLLOW:
customer churn. Everyone and their cousin wants to build a churn
model, but I’m willing to bet that a large portion of them fall flat not
because of poor ML work, but because the company/team wasn’t
clear on what to do with the predictions until after the model was
built.
Kirk Borne • @KirkDBorne
ML/AI isn’t going to solve all of your problems. Heck, Monica Rogati The Principal Data Scientist at @BoozAllen, PhD Astrophysi-
and I each wrote pieces (hers and mine) around why you shouldn’t cist. Top Data Science and Big Data Influencer. Ex-Professor.
go chasing ML just for the sake of doing so. Make sure it’s actually rocketdatasciece.org/
what your business needs AND define beforehand how it will help.

But do you think the evolution of machine learning

will end up being hampered by the lack of the talent
currently in the field?
Oriol Vinyals • @OriolVinyalsML
No, there’s simply a supply/demand imbalance right now and it’ll get Research Scientist, Machine Learning/Deep Learning/AI,
better over time. What you’re seeing is a market correction, where Google DeepMind. Previous: Google Brain.
tons of talent from other fields are crossing over to ML both because
it’s valuable to companies but also because there’s a lot of ways to
get into it.

Let me give you an example of why I love the current environment.

Here is a sample of the fields that my team got their degrees in: Adelyn • @adelynzhou
Technologist, speaker, #bot and #ai enthusiast and entrepre-
• Transportation Engineering neur. Tech and marketing by day, wanderlust by life. #CMO
• Industrial Engineering @Topbots. Formerly @nextdoor @amazon @BCG
• Thermal Science
• Quantum Physics
• Computer Science
• Statistics
• Theoretical Chemistry
Hilary Mason • @hmason
Before ML, there’s no way all of us would have ended up in the VP Research at @Cloudera. Founder at @FastForwardLabs.
same room, let alone be collaborating side-by-side to solve some Data Scientist in Residence at @accel. I Love Data and
of the coolest, most challenging problems at Uber. Yes, it’s tough cheeseburgers.
finding great talent. But that difficulty pushes folks like myself to find
brilliance in a wider spectrum of places.

How else has the industry’s attitude towards machine

learning and other AI changed since you first entered
the field? Andrew Ng • @AndrewYNg
Co-Founder of Coursera; Stanford CS adjunct faculty.
Honestly, I don’t know about 'the industry', but I can speak for the Former head of Baidu AI Group/Google Brain. #ai #machine-
companies I’ve worked for. In general, I’ve seen ML become a more learning, #deeplearning #MOOCs
formalized staple of business strategy as opposed to some lofty the-
oretical concept. It is no longer a pipe-dream to use an-ML based
strategy to generate efficiency. Those who already used ML are
opening their mind to more complex and powerful techniques and
willing to push the boundaries now in terms of research. It’s exciting.
Soumith Chintala • @soumithchintala
As a regular practitioner, it’s greatly helped elevate the conversation. I work at Facebook AI Research. I created PyTorch.
I spend a lot less time advocating for whether to use ML and much I've co-authored WGAN and DCGAN research papers
more time brainstorming how to use ML. IQ

9
Expert Panel • Big data
How do you think organizations could
be utilizing machine learning better?
Alexandra Abate, Nikhil Aggarwal,
Data Scientist at FinTech
Dia&Co Entrepreneur in
Residence at iValley
I think it comes down Innovation Center
to a very unflashy and
uncool answer: improve Defining a business case
the underlying infrastruc- at a more granular level,
ture and quality of data working through the data
collected, and focus on
these pieces first before
construct and building out
meaningful hypotheses
trying to build fancy will better position an
models. Data Scientists organization to further
and Machine Learning adopt machine learning.
Engineers can make Reviewing past modeling
better machine learning efforts (both successes
models more quickly and failures) also plays
if the data available is a key role in enabling
pertinent, robust, simple organizations to better
to load into the model
and then, if required, the
utilize machine learning.
models can easily be run Organizations also need
at scale. to ‘pair up’ domain
subject matter experts
Haftan Eckholdt, (SMEs) with data scien-
Chief Data Science tists so that both groups
Officer at Plated can better contribute to
defining the inherent busi-
Machine learning needs ness challenge and arrive
a cool dry host environ-
ment, and a designated
at a viable solution. For
instance, you must have
role to play in decision historical ‘goods’ and
making. Most organiza- ‘bads’ on a supervised
tions do not coordinate learning problem such as
those two things with predicting which customer
modeling, so that ten sub-segment will have a
models are built for every higher fraud loss metric. In
one model hosted, and an unsupervised problem,
ten models are hosted a machine may spew out
for every one model
used.
granular clusters based
on pattern recognition
and discovery. This
classification may have to
be regrouped before any
business decisions can be
made.
10
Michael Kubiske,
Director, Center for
Machine Learning
NYC at Capital One
The main pillars are data,
platform, and culture.
First off, having your
data ecosystem in the
right place is a critical
foundation. Similarly, it’s
important to have a solid
platform that enables
you to manage your
own GPU execution
framework, iterate on
models, and access
your data quickly and
at scale. Finally, to
effectively run machine
learning production,
organizations need to
establish a culture where
one can fail. Sometimes
models don’t work—and
there needs to be time
and investment to redo a
system where needed. IQ
Top 5 Most Inno-
vative In... Retail
By R&D Spend
1
United States
R&D Expense: $16.09bn
Toal Rev: $135.99bn
% of Rev spent on R&D:
11.83%
2
United States
R&D Expense: $1.23bn
Toal Rev: $8.77bn
% of Rev spent on R&D:
14.08%
3
China
R&D Expense: $1.10bn
Toal Rev: $2.77bn
% of Rev spent on R&D:
39.98%
4
United States
R&D Expense: $0.85bn
Toal Rev: $8.83bn
% of Rev spent on R&D:
9.65%
5
China
R&D Expense: $0.77bn
Toal Rev: $37.46bn
% of Rev spent on R&D:
2.07%
Source data: PwC
Top tips for
professional
speaking
by Vin
Clancy,
Growth
Hacker and
professional
speaker:

1 on black slides - 7 journey - What X

Use white words Take them on a

easier to read is, why they need X,

where and how they
can get X, big 1-3
things to remember
No more than at the close
2 10 words per
slides (ideally)

8 Remember your
clicker (always
Over-deliver bring your own!) or
3 on value so you will be glued
they have to email to the desk like an
you for slides, thus awkward DJ
allowing you to sell
to them

9 Study stand-ups
and NLP for

4 One joke every

6-7 minutes
ideas on how to
interact with the
or people will get audience - get
bored. Gifs are a them to stand, talk
nice surprise to the person next
to them, raise their
arms, shout out
answers etc. This

5 Slow down your

delivery for jokes
makes it 100x more
interactive
or important bits

10 You can only

6 Use one side of

the stage to talk
get better
by doing more
about "bad" things talks, so book lots
and one side for if you're serious
"good" things, then about making this a
pitch your solution money maker
on the "good" side

11
Guide • Big Data

How To Hire A Data

Scientist

In a recent survey by digital transformation firm Atos, 90% of businesses

who responded said they will be using data analytics in their key func-
tions by 2020. However, while turning to a technology proven in its ability
to benefit businesses is understandable, the ability of most organizations
to carry out their plans is questionable at best. Indeed, Gartner predicts
that this year as many as 60% of data projects will not make it to fruition.
They will be left to languish in the piloting and experimentation phases
before being discarded, wasting time, money, and potential earnings.

One of the most oft-cited reasons for
this high rate of failure is the difficulty that
organizations have employing the talent
to carry it out. This is a struggle for two
reasons. Firstly, such talent is not easy to
come by. The skills gap is a well-docu-
mented phenomenon, with the McKinsey
Global Institute predicting that the shortage
of data scientists in the US could increase
to 250,000 by 2024. Dr Kepa Mendibil,
course leader of the MSc in Data Science
at the University of Stirling’s School of
Management, for one, notes that, "There is
a shortage of graduates emerging with the
skills to apply the technical aspects of data
science and use analytics to make sound
business decisions."
The second issue is that many organiza-
tions still don’t know exactly what they
want to do with their data, much less how
to organize a team to collect, prepare,
and analyze it. As such, they struggle to
correctly identify and attract the candidates
they need. Data scientists do not come
cheap. The Robert Walters Global Salary
Survey for 2017 gave an estimated range
for data scientist salaries of $116,000 to
$163,500 in 2017, up 6.4% on 2016 levels.
So organizations need to get it right.
Before you do anything, you need to define
what exactly it is you need. Gary Damiano,
vice president of marketing at NoSQL
database specialists, Couchbase argues
that, "The two things you need to consider
in hiring a data scientist are: how are you
going to use them and how does their skill
set match the use?"
Data science is a relatively new discipline,
and understandably many in business know
only that they need to utilize their data. This
is not enough. You need to understand
what your goals are, and what skills some-
one will need to achieve them. Data science
is an incredibly broad field, and it helps to
educate yourself at least to the extent that
you know what you’re looking for - or bring
in a consultant who can tell you.
The first question you must ask is are you
looking for somebody who is going to be
developing algorithms, such as those for
recommendation engines, or are you look-
ing for someone who is going to be looking
more at using data to better understand
your business? If the answer is developing
algorithms, you will require someone with a
strong mathematics and computer science
background, but not necessarily any

12

experience in your industry. Walter Storm,
Chief Data Scientist at Lockheed Martin,
"If they (data scientists) have a passion
for coding, deep learning, and technology
itself, then the industry they’re in doesn’t
matter. I often refer to this as 'back office'
data science."
In the latter case, you need someone with
more business experience who is going
understand the type of questions that
will be asked of the data by users. Great
data scientists must, of course, have very
strong quantitative and programming skills,
but equally as important is some industry
experience, or at least a degree of business
savvy that suggests they will be able to
understand it. Storm continues that, "the
greater challenge is the 'front office' data
"the science work. It is this data scientist that is
the translator - speaking both the language
of the business and the language of data
greater science. The front-office data scientist
must know the industry, have a firm grasp
challenge of economics and finance, and be able
to validate, integrate and use advanced
is the models within a broader decision support
framework." You could even look to train
'front
someone up internally if this is the case.
This is also potentially a cheaper option,
as you do not need to be paying data
office' scientist wages, although it is also risky in
that they may end up not being very good.
data If looking externally, be careful not to get
blinded by impressive technical qualifica-
science
tions. Many degrees simply do not offer
a sufficient grounding in real-world appli-
cations for analytics. Be sure to confront
work." candidates with problems they are likely
to experience and see how they would go
about solving them.
Once you’ve settled on the kind of data
scientist you are looking for, you need to
actually get them to want to come and
work for you. This is easy for someone like
Google, but in companies where the work
may not be so sexy, you need to emphasize
what it is you offer. You need to show why
the work is interesting, that they will be
doing important work, that you are invested
in implementing a data program and they
will get the support they need. It is unlikely
given the nature of their profession that they
will be from a corporate background, so be
aware that they may be used to a different
working environment. Leading on from this,
be sure to engage key partners across the
organization in evaluating your candidates,
as the data scientist will undoubtedly have
to collaborate with all departments at some
point.
Also be careful how you conduct the inter-
view. If you are more data literate, do not
bombard them with everything you know.
Take an interest in their experiences and try
and engage in discussion with them. Don’t
bore them to death talking about code you
once did or tools you’ve seen.
Finally, once you have a data scientist, don’t
expect immediate returns, and don’t get
trigger happy when you don’t get them.
It is rare that a data scientist’s work will
immediately yield game-changing insights
and send profits skyrocketing. Equally, if it
becomes clear that you’ve made a mistake
in your hire, you need to stay on top of it
and ensure that it is corrected immediately,
either by getting someone else in or helping
to retool them. Capgemini estimates that
volume of data generated by businesses
will increase 20,000-fold between 2000
and 2020, and if organizations are going
to stand a chance of using it to its full
potential, they will need the talent in place
to deal with it. IQ
13
focus on • digital marketing
ARE YOU
READY FOR
What is GDPR?
On the 25th May 2018, the EU
General Data Protection Regu-
lation (GDPR) comes into full
effect after years in the making.
The GDPR is the EU's latest re-
write of its data privacy laws. The
primary objective of GDPR is
to give people control over their
data, allowing them to choose
who can use it while also forcing
companies to be transparent
around how they are doing so.
What's in it?
The definition of personal data
under GDPR has been signifi-
cantly expanded since previous
regulations to include person-
ally identifiable information
collected through cookies and
advertising IDs, as well as what
the EU terms 'sensitive infor-
mation'. This includes any data
pertaining to racial or ethnic
origin, health, finances, political
opinions, and sexual preferences.
GDPR requires companies to
erase personal data on request
unless there's a legitimate reason
to retain it, that those affected
by data breaches are alerted, and
that data protection is designed
into their products and services.
The fines for failing to abide
by these rules are considerable,
amounting to either 4% of global
annual turnover or €20 million,
depending on which is higher.
GDPR also includes an attempt
to try and force organizations to
take better care of their customer
data. A controller or processor
of the data is responsible for
informing their data procession
14
GDPR?
authority and those affected
of any data breach that puts
people’s rights and freedoms at
risk within 72 hours of it having
occurred. Although the deadline
is too tight for a more elabo-
rate investigation, by the time
an organization contacts their
data protection authority, they
should also be able to outline the
nature of the data that is affected,
a rough estimate of how many
people are impacted, what conse-
quences it could mean for them,
and what measures the organiza-
tion had already taken or plans to
take in response. Those who fail
to meet the deadline could face a
penalty up to 2% of their annual
worldwide revenue, or a sum not
less than €10 million.
But I'm in the US, why should
I care?
The impact of GDPR will be felt
by any organizations across the
globe that decide on why and
how EU citizens' personal data
is processed - regardless of where
the data has been captured and
analyzed. The GDPR recognizes
two groups of subjects that the
new legislation will apply to:
controllers and processors. A
data controller specifies how and
why personal data is processed,
while a processor does the actual
processing of the data. Basi-
cally, a controller could be any
organization, from a fund-raising
company to a charity or govern-
ment. A processor could be an IT
company hired to do the actual
data processing. Both groups
need to ensure they comply, and
the chances are extremely high
that you fall into one category or
the other.
Sounds serious. I should get
started...
You should, but you're not alone
in being slow off the mark and
many appear to have fallen
behind the curve. In a survey
conducted last year by the Direct
Marketing Association (DMA),
just 54% of businesses said they
expect to be compliant by the
deadline, while nearly a quarter
of companies have not even
started preparing yet - despite the
new law being first announced
more than five years ago. Anoth-
er recent survey of security chiefs
at FTSE 350 and Fortune 500
companies by international law
firm Paul Hastings found that
over half of companies across the
UK and US will not be ready
for the new regulations by the
deadline.
Does GDPR really mean the
end of the world as we know
it?
Not at all. In fact, in many ways
it is an opportunity. One of
the most important benefits of
GDPR is that it provides - or
rather, forces companies to
put in place - a framework for
improving data management.
Emmanuelle Brun Neckebrock,
CFO for SAP France, recently
wrote in our sister publication
CFO Magazine that, "Data is one
of your company’s most valued
resources, yet it is also one of the
most poorly managed. It’s the
golden thread that runs through
the entire organization, and in
most instances, it’s managed
casually and inconsistently, de-
pending on individual employees
and departments. You wouldn’t
let your revenue, products, or
equipment assets be handled that
way, so data (given its inherent
value) shouldn’t be any different.
It warrants the same due care and
attention."
For marketers, the most impor-
tant consideration with GDPR
will be that marketing lists need
to be opt-in. Databases will need
to be cleansed and reviewed to
ensure that it can be proven that
every name on the list opted-in
willingly, whether the name is be-
ing used for legitimate purposes,
and that the information is accu-
rate. As a result, many marketing
teams will need to fundamentally
reconsider how it is they attract
potential customers onto their
sites. This should mean an end to
the 'throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-
and-see-if-it-sticks' approach
we have seen marketers adopt
in recent years. The idea that
customers will sign up to clutter
their inbox with your ads is at
best delusional, at worst danger-
ous. Marketers will have to pro-
vide something in return, namely
superior and useful content. This
should provide a particular boon
to content marketers, who will be
able to focus on creativity rather
than pumping out as much guff
as possible in the hope someone
pays attention.
Under GDPR, businesses will
also have to prioritize the securi-
ty of the data they hold, clearly
communicate privacy terms, and
inform customers if there are
any breaches. This should, for
one, provide some semblance of
consistency to the hitherto messy
world of cybersecurity law, mak-
ing it at least somewhat easier
for organizations to understand
what best practices should be.
What the experts

JEN SEY, TAMARA GRUZBARG, SEAN SWENTEK,

CMO Of Glovbal Brands at Levi Senior Vice President of Data, Executive Director & Chief of
are doing...

Strauss & Co Analytics and Business Information Marketing at A Walk On Water

We have a diverse portfolio of
media mix investments, so will
continue to focus and prior-
itize on storytelling. While
some data-driven opportu-
nities will be limited/scaled
back, we think that this type
of governance is necessary for
maturation of the digital me-
dia space, specifically around
accountability and transparen-
cy. We’re taking steps to ensure
that all media vendors we work
with are compliant, and we’re
ensuring both brand safety and
consumer privacy.
at Time Inc
By increasing the scope of leg-
islation coverage and requiring
a very explicit consent from
an individual, it can seriously
limit the ways how companies
use behavioral information.
We will need to learn how to
‘sell’ our data strategies directly
to consumers in order for
them to opt-in. It is clearly
a very challenging situation,
and will force us to define and
communicate the value of the
information from a consumer
stand point.
The important thing to
remember when it comes to
GDPR and client data is YOU
are the first and most impor-
tant line of defense in protect-
ing that data. Organizations
that will succeed going for-
ward are those who recognize
the importance of data security
is second to none.
Some of the ways that busi-
nesses can protect themselves
and their clients in a post-GD-
PR world include limiting
ownership and access rights,
performing regular security
assessments and identifying
opportunities for improving
security, and working closely
and openly with your custom-
ers and your vendors to ensure
that privacy is at the forefront
of all transactions. IQ

GDPR Checklist...
1 Audit your data flows, particularly those that cross borders

2 Identify your third party data processors

3 Demonstrate accountability in all personal data processing activities

4 Prepare for data subjects looking to exercise their rights

5 Ensure your breach management processes are up to scratch

6 Provide universal training to all employees around data privacy

7 Appoint a Data Protection Officer

15
Page Title •

D
ata visualization has evolved dramatically over the last decade. Organizations
now have at their disposal highly sophisticated software with which to
present the vast amount of information they now collect. It is no longer
simply a case of analysts putting up a few bars charts, rather we are seeing data present-
ed through highly-engaging, often interactive designs that are far better for convincing
decision makers of the validity of discoveries you have made from data. They draw an
impactful response from users, taking them on a journey that enables them to understand

The
the insights being presented or discover insights for themselves

These capabilities have given data visualization a new found importance across organiza-
tions of all sizes. A recent Business2community survey of data professionals found that
the data science skill with the highest correlation to project success was data mining and
visualization tools, and this is translating into investment. In Progress’s recent 2017 Data
Connectivity Outlook Survey, 59% said they are using data visualization, and this number is

Future Of
sure to rise in the coming years.

The next five years promise even more exciting developments in the data visualization
arena. We asked six experts in the field from organizations leading the way what they think
will be the major advances.

Data Viz Abon Chaudhuri,

Sr. Applied Researcher at Walmart Labs

No matter how the tech industry and its
consumers evolve in the next 5 years,
their collective fondness for generating
Where will we be in five and exploring data is not going to wither.
Hence, opportunities for data visualization
years time? will continue to grow. The demand for
visualization from a business perspective
is strongly felt when new technologies in
related fields gain popularity. The advent of
medical imaging technologies (CT, MRI etc.)
in the early 90s gave birth to several R&D
companies offering medical and scientific
visualization solutions. Such possibilities are
abundant in today's world. For example, in
the next few years, Internet of Things will
make it possible to connect to and collect
data from any device anytime, giving rise
to an unforeseen deluge of data. A solution
that offers the ability to visualize such data
quickly and effectively will attract many
takers. On the other hand, AI and deep
learning will proliferate to new domains.
Needless to say, onboarding users will
embrace tools capable of visualizing these
complex deep learning engines and the
data churned by them.

Akash Mukherjee,
Data Products, People Growth at Facebook

There are three big changes we will see in
the next five years:
1. Disruptive tools with serious differenti-
ations,
2. Application in new industry verticals,
and
3. Cross-pollination of people from differ-
ent backgrounds entering this field
Data visualization is constantly evolving.
The number of analytics tools is exploding.
There's a mix of two categories of products
in the market. On one hand, you have rapid
prototyping tools and on the other, there's
a range of robust charting libraries in the
market. In the next five years, we will see
some of these technologies being married.
We will also witness the next big disruption
in the data visualization & analytics market,
since the days when Tableau and

16
 big data • expert panel

Microstrategy came in and stood out from
legacy tools of the 90s. So, I expect the
upcoming analytics tools to seriously differ-
entiate themselves in their offerings, instead
of just playing catch-up with Tableau and
Microstrategy.
In the next five years, I also think data
visualization will start putting its strong
foothold in different industry verticals like
HR, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Education
etc. We already have some specialized
products for Marketing Analytics, Product
Chi-Yi Kuan,
Director of Business Analytics at LinkedIn
Analytics, HR Analytics, etc. We will see
more of these.
And finally, the real magic will happen when
people from varied backgrounds, ranging
from astronomy to fine arts come and join
the field data science. Some of them may
go through the foundational concepts of
data. But, in the end, we, as a commu-
nity, will gain a lot when there is a cross
pollination of ideas from these very
different universes.
Ken Cherven,
Data Visualizations Specialist at GM
A lot has been made of the self-service possibility
for all business users to instantly turn into data
visualizers, but I don't see this materializing. What
I believe will happen is the continuing evolution
where different parts of the business begin en-
gaging in data visualization at a greater rate. This
will include parts of the enterprise that are not
customer-facing, but would benefit greatly from
more sophisticated visualization of their business
metrics. Finance, IT, and engineering functions
could all function more efficiently if they can move
away from databases and spreadsheets and
toward visualization platforms. IQ

I think there will be big advances in data viz
for effortless and easy to discover thanks to
the information technology revolution, which
enabled many players and startups to
invest and innovate many disruptive tools in
the past few years. More exciting advance-
ments will be expected too, including:
• Supporting big data 3 Vs at scale: like
100X for Volume, 10X for Velocity, 5X
for Variety
• The end-to-end set up time will be
much shorter, the learning curve to be
a data viz expert would be within days
• More flexible user interfaces with easier
ways to surface complicated cases
w/o any further advanced coding for
discovering the underlying knowledge
and relationships, such as social
graphing, 3+ dimensional graphing,
etc.
• More integration could happen here,
such as new intelligent features in data
viz application for predictive modeling,
pattern discovery, automatic alerting,
etc.
• Given the recent crazy popularity in AR
technology for Pokemon Go, interest-
ing data viz application to support AR
or VR will soon become available and
have the potential to be a hot topic
down the road.

Gabi Steele, Doug Ireland,

Data Viz Specialist at wework cfo at prezi

From a business perspective, data Having data on demand in an organization

visualization roles and teams will likely
expand exponentially within most major
corporations in the next 5 years but even
more significantly perhaps is new business
opportunities for younger companies that
can position themselves in a sweet spot of
harnessing data visualization in unique and
highly profitable ways. Branded content is
one example of a revenue driven advertis-
ing space that fits unusually well into data
viz market.
is becoming a given highly technical organ-
izations. This trend will continue to expand
to more traditional industries and smaller
companies. The next step will be having the
correct visualizations available on demand,
too, to be used and reused in multiple
channels and media of communication.

17
 interview • strategy

Creating And Implementing

Innovative Strategy At World Vision
Craig Buzkho, Srategy Lead at World Vision International,
tells us how it's done

tion, and your competitors would have been

After a 15 year career in strategic and operational roles for sufficient. Implementing your 5-year strategy
digital businesses across the USA and Australia, Craig joined into annual business plans with quarterly
World Vision Australia in 2010 to lead digital strategy for- reviews would have been sufficient. But today,
mulation and transformation programs. Since 2014, Craig has been working with your organization and your competitors literally
World Vision Australia on broader corporate strategy development and execution, have access to terabytes of information in real
most recently supporting the CEO and Board on defining a new 5 year strategy. time.
Craig also supports several strategic initiatives for growth markets including
peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate shared value and impact investing. As a strategist, can you honestly sit on that
and only sample it a few times a year? The
What are the main components of a strategic choices and hold the organization to reality is the strategies that succeed are the
successful business strategy? those choices. ones that employ the richness of data in new
ways, and strategy processes and strategists
I think there are several but I’d like to high- In this digital age, contexts are often fluctuat- need to flex around this. I’ve noticed many of
light two I think are most critical. The first one ing and changing. Organizations are grappling the leading business schools are evolving their
might sound unusual coming from someone with their transformation into more agile or MBA curriculums to include more on busi-
working at a non-profit, but I believe what’s “lean” organizations, so I think we need to ness analysis, some even offering dedicated
most important for business strategy is clearly remind ourselves that good strategy is about degrees. I think this is a clear sign of the reality
delivering customer value. I believe in taglines making clear choices. today organisations are facing. 
like “relentless pursuit of customer needs”. At
World Vision, our customers are 2 types: the In what ways do you think the role of Second is tougher; how do strategists provide
supporters who give us money to do work a strategist is going to evolve/trans- foresight? I think the time horizon for decisions
in the field, and the people in communities form in coming years? based on insight is squeezing based on the
we benefit. Strategically, we have to start flow of data. So the directional future strat-
with these two customer types, frame these First is how strategists provide insight. We are egists help determine for organizations are
groups just like you would customers, and use in the data/information age, where staggering going to need a more foresight approach.
this as your primary lens for value creation and amounts of data/information are flowing in
capture. and out of businesses. From detailed tracking Running scenarios that model different futures
of consumer behaviors via mobile devices to inform the choices you make today are
The second most critical component is the through to sensors across supply chains. An absolutely essential. At World Vision, we are
fundamental role of strategy: make clear organization’s success is predicated on its already seeing things we thought would occur
choices! This might sound trivial, but I feel ability to use the information flowing around in 5 years are happening now, and things we
this fundamental is often lacking in business them. thought were going to happen in 12 months
strategy. This is the space where organizations are more likely a few years away. It’s getting
have to make choices. Choices may be excit- The role of the strategist needs to evolve tougher for executives and boards to make
ing; revolving around growth, innovation, what around employing the use of data and decisions given the increasing uncertainty that
the “digital future” might look like (through the information in new ways to inform business the future holds within many industries and
customer lens) and, how we choose to create strategy. A way to describe this is to contrast sectors. I think the strategist needs to help
and capture value. But there are also difficult where classical strategy formulation has come provide more in strategic foresight.
choices, ones around what you won’t do, or from and where modern-day strategy needs
might have to stop doing. The role of business to work. What do you think is the most com-
strategy is to successfully get an organization, mon mistake strategists are making
particularly senior executives and the board, Historically, formulating a strategy based on when it comes to dealing with new
into a space where they can make clear, annual markers of your market, your organiza- technology/innovation?

18
I think all organizations see new technology/
innovation as ways to help reduce costs.
However, I think more mature organizations
see innovation as a way to help revenue,
including attacking new revenue sources.
I think few organizations are successfully
dealing with new technology/innovation as
ways to reimagine what their business could
become. I think as strategists we need to
help businesses grapple with the value new
technology or innovation could bring, and be
willing to explore the implications it has on the
current business model. New technology and
innovation needs to be able to challenge the
status quo of your business as much as the
markets or industries you operate in. Strate-
gists are well positioned within an organisation
to influence the conversation.  and failure and where your
Whats your best guess for how your
industry will look like in 3 years?
Our ‘industry’ definition is tricky, perhaps best
described as ‘helping people’. I like using the
phrase ‘helping people’ as the planet is really
changing quite dramatically in terms of tech-
nology infrastructure. Today many developing
countries are more likely to have technology
infrastructures like mobile phone services and
solar electricity than access to food and clean
water. The underlying technology enables
concepts like ‘information ecosystems’ where
World Vision’s footprint can intersect in new
ways to partner differently with other organiza-
tions in the field. That is our aspiration for the
next 3 years and the reality is, the investments
to get there might be tough to secure so it
might take us longer than we would like.
In Australia, World Vision operates primarily
as a fundraiser. In this context, the next 3
years will also be very different. We expect
a significant amount of donations to come
through online channels, funds being raised
through new platforms like peer-to-peer
fundraising (where a friend runs a marathon
to raise money for a cause). Online crowd-
funding platforms are available to help raise
funds to build schools and hospitals. Even the
very concept of ‘money’ is changing – money
from Australia to the field is all electronic, and
there’s the possibility that different models like
cryptocurrency will help reduce the costs as-
sociated with international funds transfer and
remittances. We think that the way Australians
give to charity is changing
and will continue to change,
and therefore World Vision
will need to change as well.
What are some big
changes you feel need
to be made to the corpo-
rate mentality in order
to make them more
effective at embracing
innovation?
I think it’s important to
understand the concept of
disruption. Understanding
common patterns of success
organization might be on the
disruption ‘curve’ are impor-
tant framing for innovation.
This is especially important
for long-established incum-
bents like World Vision, where
the threat of disruption might
be harder to detect. From
the board down, established
organizations need a mindset
that is fundamentally willing to
disrupt themselves. Without
that, innovation will not able
to flourish in pursuit of deliv-
ering greater customer value.
The track-record of organiza-
tions who failed to respond
to the disruption caused by
other organizations innovat-
ing shows a common pattern
in failed mindsight. I don’t
see the word ‘disruption’
as merely a buzzword; it’s
a mindset all organizations
need to adopt. With it,
they can navigate choices,
particularly difficult ones such
as potentially shutting down
core “cash cow” businesses.
Enterpreneurship
Quotes
"Honesty and integrity are by far
the most important assets of an
entrepreneur."
Zig Ziglar, Business Author
"I'm convinced that about half of what sepa-
rates the successful entrepreneurs from the
non-successful ones is pure perseverance."
Steve Jobs, co-founder and CEO of
Apple
"The entrepreneur always searches for
change, responds to it, and exploits it as
an opportunity."
Peter Drucker
"If you just work on stuff that you like
and you're passionate about, you don't
have to have a master plan with how
things will play out."
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of
Facebook
"The art of delegation is one of the key
skills any entrepreneur must master."
Richard Branson
"It is human nature, especially as we
get older, to look for stability in our
lives. But if you want to be a successful
entrepreneur, you have to fight against
that somewhat, as starting a business
requires movement. You cannot stay
still."
Robert Herjavec
"Knowing whose advice to take and on
what topic is the single most important
decision an entrepreneur can make."
Vinod Khosla
"An entrepreneur needs to know what
they need, period. Then they need
to find an investor who can build off
whatever their weaknesses are - wheth-
er that's through money, strategic
IQ partnerships or knowledge."
Daymond John
19
Article • Machine Learning
Machine Learning: 5
Questions Enterprises
Must Consider
E
vidence of machine learning's potential to change the
world is now everywhere, from lights-out factories through
to Netflix's recommendation engine. However, adoption
is still not reaching the levels many predicted. In one SAP survey of
3,100 companies, just 7% said they are investing in the technology,
compared with 50% of companies defined by the SAP Center for
Business Insight as 'leaders'. This follows a number of other surveys
that have yielded similar results, including Belatrix Software's ‘Power-
ing the Adoption of Machine Learning’, to which only 18% of com-
panies who were asked if they had already started a machine learning
initiative said they had done so, 40% that they were investigating it
but hadn’t started, and 43% that they had no plans to start one at all.
This has serious implications. It allows competitors who adopt earlier
to gain competitive edge that may prove impossible to recover from
and puts you constantly on the back foot, struggling to catch up. It
then makes it harder to attract the best talent when you finally do
decide to look to the technology, because who wants to work for a
Luddite? However, you also need to be careful not to blindly rush in.
The hype around machine learning, and AI in general, is such that
it is tempting to rush in, desperately crowbarring in the technology
anywhere with no sense of how to actually implement it successfully.
This has already happened before with AI. In the 1980s, inflated
expectations and subsequent disillusionment led to the so-called AI
Winter, bringing investment to a grinding halt and pushing research
‘underground’. If this were to happen again, it could prove devastating
for the technology.
We have outlined five questions you need to ask yourself before
you set about adopting machine learning.
Do You Really Need It?
As with any new technology, there is a sense of keeping up with the Jone-
ses, of adoption for adoption's sake. This could lead to valuable resources
being diverted away from areas and projects that could really drive growth.
If the Joneses get a fancy new lawnmower, there's no point blowing all
your money on one too if you don't have a garden. Look out the window
first, check there's grass to cut. Often, you'll find there isn't any. As David
Linthicum recently wrote on infoworld.com, ‘Machine learning is valuable
only for use cases that benefit from dynamic learning - and there are not
many of those. The problem is if you have a hammer, everything looks like
a nail. Vendors pushing machine learning cloud services say it's a good fit
for many applications that shouldn't use it at all. As a result, the technology
will be over-applied and misused, wasting enterprise resources.’
20
Who Takes Ownership?
Machine learning requires board level rep-
resentation. This needs to be someone who
sees its potential and believes in the project.
They must have vision, openness, ability to
change, and have a strong understanding of
the business. They must also have, at the very
least, a good understanding of the technol-
ogy.
This could mean that someone already in
the company takes charge, such as the Chief
Information Officer, Chief Data Officer, or
Chief Technology Officer, all of whom have
a viable claim for ownership. Alternatively, it
could be that an entirely new position exclu-
sively focused on AI technologies is needed,
particularly at larger organizations. Chief
scientist at Baidu Research and AI guru
Andrew Ng argues that a Chief AI Officer
(CAIO) can fill a number of important func-
tions necessary for ensuring that an organiza-
tion is well positioned for adoption. They can
take a view across the entire company to best
understand its potential application in each
department and the scale of the implemen-
tation challenge, designating AI expertise
and technology from a centralized team
according to need. A good CAIO will set out
a roadmap around how to integrate AI with
the company's overall strategy and fight to
ensure resources are available where required.
A CAIO should also develop more knowl-
edge about how AI works, which should help
when selecting the right technology and not
get bamboozled by the many salesmen trying
to convince you that you have a need you
really don't and that their product will solve
it, which often it won't.
Are People Ready?
You need to empower all employees,
including management, to know how to
develop and use models. This isn't to say that
everyone needs to understand things like
deep and shallow learning within a neural
network, but a basic understanding that it
will produce better and more accurate results
and decisions than gut instinct means they
will be both willing and able to use it to its
full potential.
This is no easy feat. In a recent survey of
1,600 senior managers by IT services spe-
cialist Infosys Ltd., 54% said that the biggest
challenge to adopting AI remains ‘employee
fear of change’. This may be because of a
pervading fear that it will make certain jobs
irrelevant, but equally the technology still
needs to prove it actually works or there will
always be reluctance using it for everyday
tasks. You need to teach them to engage
with the machines, a challenge which may
not even be possible. Julie Shah, an associate
professor of aeronautics at MIT, says, 'What
people don’t talk about is the integration
problem. Even if you can develop the system
to do very focused, individual tasks for what
people are doing today, as long as you can’t
entirely remove the person from the process,
you have a new problem that arises — which
is coordinating the work of, or even com-
munication between people and these AI
systems. And that interaction problem is
still a very difficult problem for us, and it’s
currently unsolved.'
You hope that in time people will become
accustomed to working alongside machines,
but at the moment perhaps the best that
companies can do is be transparent with how
machine learning will be integrated, what
it means for jobs, and provide training for
people as to how they can engage with their
new robot colleagues.
Can You Attract The Necessary Talent?
While machine learning implementation is a holistic endeavor and
people can be trained to a degree, it still requires at least someone
with a data science background or experience with machine learning.
These are, unfortunately, thin on the ground. According to the job
search website Indeed.com, June 2015 to June 2017 saw a 500% rise
in the number of job postings in the field of AI. Of these job postings,
61% in the AI industry were for machine learning engineers, 10%
were for data scientists and just 3% were for software developers.
According to a survey from Tech Pro Research, though, just 28% of
companies have some experience with AI or machine learning, and
more than 40% said their enterprise IT personnel don’t have the skills
required to implement and support it. Much of the talent is being
swept up by the major tech companies such as Google, and often they
are being taken from academia, further stifling the pipeline. Organ-
izations need to be wary of this and work to ensure that they act
in such a way that more talent flows into the pipeline, not less, and
that they make themselves an attractive proposition with interesting
challenges and competitive salaries.
Are You Mature Enough In Your Data Efforts?
You need data to train your algorithms - lots of it. Furthermore, this
needs to be of sufficient quality. Organizations who lack maturity in
their data capabilities are simply not going to be successful in their
machine learning efforts. You need to be collecting everything. This
data needs to be cleaned. Mistakes in the training data infect a system
like urine in a swimming pool, polluting all the results and rendering
any insights untrustworthy. It leads to wrong solutions, bad decision
making, and potentially unethical AI. It also needs to be removed
from silos and requires aggregating. This is a lengthy and difficult
process that few are resourced for. The data also needs to be secure,
and you need to be aware of the many regulations in place that hold
organizations back from using personal or sensitive data to train their
algorithms, particularly in industries like finance and healthcare. As
we saw recently in the UK when the senior data protection adviser
to the NHS deemed the access DeepMind was given to the London
Royal Free NHS Trust’s data to be ‘legally inappropriate’. If you are
not equipped to do all this, you're not ready for machine learning. IQ
21
E PX aP Eg Re T TPi At Nl Ee L •• S T R A T E G Y
In a recent survey by Oracle, more
I
than a third of the world's CFOs
said that disruption or technolog-
ical change threaten their firm's
profitability in the medium term. In an Accen-
ture Strategy report released last year, 58% of
CFOs said they believe their industries are set
for disruption, while 24% of CFOs said that
disruption will destroy their company and 41%
that it will cause more than half of their com-
petitors to fold.
There is, unfortunately, no universal model for
avoiding disruption. Every incumbent has its
own history, experience, strengths, and weak-
nesses, and every challenger is different for the
same reasons. There are a number of universal
truths, though, that must be applied when de-
veloping a strategy capable of withstanding the
most innovative entrants to the market.
We asked seven of the world’s foremost strat-
egists from leading organizations how they
set their long-term strategy in such a way that
avoided disruption and ensured they stayed
ahead of the pack.
Sayeed Sanullah, First Vice President
(Strategy & Analytics) at Wells Fargo
I think long-term plans should not be reac-
tive but proactive to disruption. One of the
best approaches to be proactive to disruption
is to observe, analyze, and learn from not just
how companies are disrupted in one’s industry,
but also how companies are being/ disrupted
across all industries. I study and evaluate how
customers’ expectations, preferences, and expe-
riences are shaped and influenced by different
companies/industries who fulfill their needs
and aspirations. I leverage all such insights and
regularly adapt, adjust, reshape, refresh, and re-
calibrate my long-term plans. I am comfortable
with uncertainty and open to taking informed
and calculated risks after assessing and evaluat-
ing multiple scenarios.
James Lemon, VP Commercial Strate-
gy at Travelport
It’s your people, not your plans that need to be
reactive to disruption. Be realistic about your
planning. How long-term are you really look-
ing? Is that the right approach, given the speed
of customer, competitor, and industry change
you are seeing? New entrants often start by
doing common sense things that incumbents
miss, such as gaining customer traction at a
fraction of the cost of a legacy player. Ask your-
self periodically: What value do you really add
to your market and can you protect that value,
such as your pricing – in the face of someone
who is bringing a totally fresh approach?
Clive Tillotson, Director of Business
Operations & Strategy at Fujitsu
Let me turn this around as a question. How
effective do you think your long-term plans
are for you? Can you recall long-term plans
are really materialising? I’d invite a different
approach, instead of investing massive efforts
in your long-term plans, consider different
scenarios for the business and build a narrative
around each one, including how you would
plan to react as each scenario unfolds. Then,
revisit these periodically with leadership teams
and see how realistic and likely the scenarios
are. Long-term plans can bore even the most
committed business leader, but a scenario is
more pervasive - it’s a story, a snapshot of pos-
sible outcomes that people discuss vigorously,
and as they do so, they surface the points of dis-
ruption much more readily and focus on how
to address that disruption. Long-term plans
often sit on the shelf.
Lillian Bautista, Director Strategy at
Adidas
I would go a step further to say that one
shouldn’t only be reactive to disruption, but
you should do all you can to anticipate the dis-
ruption – be constantly scanning for disruptive
threats in your competitive environment and
have a strategic process that can take in new
bits of market developments and adjust course
if necessary.
Ignaas Caryn, Director, Corporate
Strategy at Air France-KLM
Scenarios offer perspectives on how the future
might look like. Building perspectives derived
from future scenarios into your strategic plan-
ning processes can give you a sense of the scale
of the changes that might occur. Building a
portfolio of options can make a company bet-
ter prepared to seize opportunities and address
challenges.
Thierry Van Landegem, Chairman at
GreenTouch
One will never be able to foresee every single
move, especially disruptive ones. It is, there-
fore, essential to build an organization that is
flexible and adaptive in all its dimensions. As
mentioned before, employees and management
play a crucial role in this. As a company, we
need to make sure that those key stakeholders
deserve enough attention and get a continuous
development opportunity. Developing their
skill base, in order to become more innovative,
flexible, and business minded is critical. And,
not only to become reactive but more and more
pro-active.
Charles Purtell, VP Open Innovation &
Strategy at Beckman Coulter
Our 3-5-year outlooks include fairly rigorous
evaluation of the risk of disruption. When we
identify a potential threat, we monitor them
routinely, (monthly, quarterly, annually) and
develop countermeasures to minimize the risk
of the threat as part of our execution of strate-
gic plans. We are also far more open to disrupt-
ing ourselves, which is an important cultural
element to drive disruption versus reacting
to it. IQ

DIGITAL INNOVATION
AT HSBC
Interview with Dr. Oesemeke Mosindi, Digital Innovation &
Fintech at HSBC RBWM UK & Europe
Dr. Osemeke Mosindi is a Digital Innovation Lead at HSBC with ex-
tensive experience in developing beta testing co-creation platforms
in banking. He led the product team that created the award-win-
ning Barclays Launchpad, and is now developing co-creation initi-
atives at HSBC. He is responsible for new digital product ideation
and development, including co-creation platforms, payments and
open banking. HSBC is one of the world’s largest banking and fi-
nancial services organisations, serving around 38 million customers
through four global businesses.
How can innovators prepare their better the chances of joining more ‘dots’.
business for a transformed future? With open innovation generally, it is easy to
(digital, blockchain etc.) get carried away with trying to partner with
everyone and get involved in everything, so
The best way to prepare the business for I have found that it helps to think critically
the future is to put the fundamentals of about what you want to achieve in advance,
testing and learning in place, and to create and how you will go about achieving it.
a platform that will help the business test
new ideas and business models, as new Have you used hackathons and
technologies emerge and consumer behav- internal competitions to boost
iour changes. innovation strategy, why are
these a good growth format?
What technology do you foresee
to be the next big industry disrupt- I am particularly interested in generating
er and why? ideas that are ‘outside the box’, and doing
this at scale. Our individual limited experi-
I am a technologist at heart, I was (still am ences mean that there are some ‘dots’ we
in my spare time) a developer, but I also simply cannot see, regardless of how many
know that technology does not create times we look. Hackathons help to provide
change by itself. There has to be a coming the right tools and the right environment
together of the right set of conditions for people with diverse experiences to
(consumer needs, regulation etc.), for come together and think about a collective
change to happen. There are a number problem, or several problems. The prac-
of new technologies on the horizon, like tical nature of hackathons, also means it
blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), is easier for stakeholders to buy into the
augmented reality etc. I think AI will have ideas generated as the participants would
the most impact, because of its ability to usually have built a prototype, and this can
reduce the effort required in a lot of existing generate a huge feeling of excitement within
activities, while increasing precision. an organization.
Can you outline a few best How do you see your industry
practices for approaching open being affected by behavioral
innovation collaboration across science and design thinking?
industries?
My doctoral research was in information
I strongly believe that as innovators we can behavior, which is essentially how people
learn a lot from other industries. Our job behave when they encounter new informa-
is to join the ‘dots’ when we see a pat- tion. So I am very passionate about under-
tern emerging, and the more diverse the standing consumers’ behaviors and needs,
experiences we expose ourselves to, the and creating digital products that puts
digital strategy • interview
those needs front and centre. In financial
services specifically, there are very practical
ways in which studying consumer behavior
can help improve services provided to cus-
tomers. Especially with the recent launch of
open banking, and the expected launch of
tools that will help consumers manage all
aspects of their financial lives, for exam-
ple, by analyzing their account data and
providing relevant products and services.
Nudging customers to save at the right
time, nudging them to pay off debts etc. I
think these will bring profound changes to
how consumers manage their money, and
therefore how they interact with their banks.
In a big multi-national, how are
you fostering a start-up ecosystem
for fearless innovation and rapid
growth?
There are a number of elements that go into
creating the right environment and platform
for fostering a start-up ecosystem. We are
positioning the brand with that communi-
ty, creating the right processes within the
organization, and simplifying the speed of
integration to work with start-ups. All these
elements ensure that we are more proactive
in engaging with start-ups, and when we
engage in specific projects, the experience
is great for both the start-up and HSBC UK.
How important is consumer feed-
back in driving your innovation
strategy?
Consumer feedback is very important in
testing the output of our innovation strategy,
and also refining the strategy. I have been
involved in co-creation initiatives, and I
strongly believe consumer feedback helps
build better and more innovative products.
The innovation strategy should always
involve co-creation and engagement with
the consumer, to ensure that the outcome
meets the right needs. IQ
23
feature article • blockchain
50
Blockchain
Startups
To Watch
Out For
1. Telegram
Telegram is a messaging platform that has already accrued 100
million active users during its two and a half years in existence. Its
pivot into blockchain has made waves because of the sheer scale
of its ambition, both in terms of the technology it is developing
and its Initial Coin Offering (ICO). It is reportedly seeking to raise as
much as $5 billion, which would make it comfortably the largest
crypto token sale to date, and if the technology it is offering pans
out, then it is easy to see why the sums are so high.
The Telegram Open Network (TON) it is proposing is essentially a
decentralized WeChat. According to TechCrunch, it will act as "a
platform for future ICOs, future cryptocurrencies, future decen-
tralized applications and a new kind of censorship-proof internet
system." Its offerings are to include distributed file storage similar
to IPFS, a proxy service for creating decentralized VPN services, a
secure browsing environments similar to TOR, services for decen-
tralized third party apps built on smart contracts, and peer-to-peer
2. Colony
Colony is seeking to revolutionize the world of work. The London-
based startup enables new organizations to structure themselves
as ecosystems of mutually beneficial interests and groups, rather
than with a centralized leadership. The framework proposes the
ability for peers, as opposed to management, to incentivize each
other to work towards a common goal. This should lead to the
creation of decentralized autonomous organizations that function
as a true 'meritocracy'.
The concept is simple. Each startup, or 'colony', has its own
unique token. The company is divided into groups of people who
specialize in certain areas. Each person work on tasks that fit
their skills. As individuals complete more tasks, they get tokens.
The more tokens they hold, the more equity of the colony they
own. Once a certain amount of tokens is earned, workers are also
awarded an equal amount of reputation. This is used to confer
24
T
he last year has seen hype around block-
chain reach fever pitch. It has moved be-
yond being seen as merely 'the technology
underpinning Bitcoin' and cemented itself
as an incredibly disruptive entity in its own right - one
with the potential to transform the operating models of
entire industries.
This has seen organizations invest heavily in the tech-
nology, with CB Insights estimating that corporations
have pumped more than $1.2 billion into blockchain
since 2012. However, as with any new technology, it is
startups doing the most exciting work. We've looked
at 50 really worth keeping an eye on. This list is, of
course, not exhaustive, and many of these are still in
the early stages, but there are already indications of
the tremendous changes it could ring.
transactions. The platform will use its own 'Gram' tokens as its
central medium of exchange. These will function as payment for
everything on the platform.
In a whitepaper setting out its ambitions, the company said:
"Telegram will use its expertise in encrypted distributed data
storage to create TON, a fast and inherently scalable multi-block-
chain architecture. TON can be regarded as a decentralized
supercomputer and value transfer system. By combining minimum
transaction time with maximum security, TON can become a VISA/
Mastercard alternative for the new decentralized economy."
While there is some debate around whether the technology
Telegram is promising is actually viable, this has not stopped hype
hitting ridiculous proportions. Given the organization's pedigree,
there is every reason to believe it is well positioned moving forward.
influence in the colony for voting and dispute resolution, as well
as enabling you to set tasks for others. Reputation cannot be
transferred and decays over time to prevent any one person having
undue influence without continual contribution to the colony. It also
means that tokens themselves don't necessarily entitle someone to
rewards, rather only those who actually contribute meaningful work
to the colony (as evidenced by their reputation score) are entitled to
proportional rewards.
Essentially, Colony wants to give agency back to the worker, and
it could have implications for the entire economy. The anonymity
blockchain enables could even help improve gender parity.
Colony shelved an ICO planned for late last year, but its tentatively
rescheduled token sale for Q2 of 2018 is sure to be a huge hit.
3. ShipChain
ShipChain was founded with the goal of turning the $8.1 trillion
freight industry on its head. Its platform enables companies and
individual buyers to track products across the entire supply chain
as they move between all carriers, instead of just one or more
single access points as is currently the case. They can also receive
real-time information throughout the transport cycle and communi-
cate instantly with all carriers and other waypoints with ease. This
brings an unprecedented levels of accountability, transparency, and
trust to the sector.
ShipChain isn't just special because of the impact it could have
on such a major aspect of business. It already has a beta product,
a large company partnership to test the platform, and has won a
4. FarmaTrust
The WHO estimates that one in ten medical products circulating
in low- and middle-income countries are either substandard or
falsified. More than 120,000 die in Africa alone as a result of fake
anti-malarial drugs alone, either because they are substandard or
simply contained no active ingredients at all.
FarmaTrust has decided to confront this issue head-on using
blockchain technology. They assign each medicine a unique ID and
add it to their immutable ledger, enabling it to be tracked from the
point of origin through to the point of consumption, making copies
and undocumented drugs far easier to spot
FarmaTrust can also be used to automatically notify law enforce-
5. DecentraLand
In Virtual Reality (VR) today, you are at the whim of the developer.
They can alter a virtual reality at will, if they go bust then the whole
VR world gets shut down, and they have control of the increasingly
large amount of personal information players must provide to
partake.
Decentralized VR changes this dynamic, handing control of online
worlds back to the user. One startup making waves in this area
is Blockchain-based virtual reality universe, Decentraland. In
Decentraland, you can use the platform's own cryptocurrency
'MANA' to purchase a plot of virtual land. You can then build
whatever you like on it, whether this be a house or a virtual
neighborhood, and populate it with unique virtual objects. You can
even turn it into a profitable business, as well as host social events.
Virtual landowners can monetize their worlds by selling space to
advertisers or renting them out in exchange for MANA. The number
of Decentraland land parcels are purposefully limited to ensure that
it is not left abandoned and so that the value of land increases if the
platform gains traction. These transactions don't require any central
authority to broker the deal because it is done using cryptocurren-
cy, which further means users receive 100% of the compensation
generated through their creation.
place in the Blockchain in Trucking Alliance. It has also assembled
a core group of backers made up of some of accomplished entre-
preneurs and logistics personnel on the planet, including former
CEO of DHL, Roger Crook, Kevin Harrington from Shark Tank, and
former CEO of Miramax, Steve Schoch.
The startup's public token sale launched at the beginning of
January 2018 with a target of $10 million (in ETH) via the first token
sale, and then by market price, with a soft limit of $30 million by the
end of the first public sale.
ment if significant numbers of counterfeits are uncovered in a par-
ticular area. The system also helps pharma companies avoid waste
incurred through expired drugs, and avoid returns fraud which is
endemic in the pharma industry. They benefit from their exclusive
focus on the pharmaceutical supply chain, which positions them
to best understand the regulations that apply and the issues faced
within the sector.
FarmaTrust’s CEO, Raja Sharif, told ccn.com, "We believe not only
is there commercial profit to be made from this system, but it is one
of the few companies that is there to service society. After all, we
have a strong conviction that our project will save lives."
The popularity of the platform's ICO suggests that this is also
something the public want. Decentraland held its initial coin offering
(ICO) last year and raised $25 million from 4,000 investors. Ariel
Meilich, founder of blockchain-based virtual platform Decentraland,
explained the motivation behind the project: "We believe Virtual
Reality will flourish once users have a more prominent role in
controlling their creations. Currently, the companies that create the
virtual worlds own all of the content built by the users. They are the
ones who profit, reap the benefits from the network effects, and
have the power to undo, change or censor what happens within
the world itself. The true potential of VR might be realized, and
certainly surpass what already exists, if this power were put into the
hands of the users instead."
Blockchain expert Simon de la Rouviere adds that it may also be
vital for the future of blockchain. He argues that, "If you can 'earn
your keep' in bitcoin in a virtual world, governed by incorruptible
smart contracts, and it is a world you want to live in and cooperate
in more than the real world, what would that do to us? I suspect we
will most definitely see a new surge of people demanding exactly
that reality into the real world." Ultimately, both blockchain and VR
could well need each other to succeed, and Decentraland is likely
to be at the heart of it.
25
feature article • blockchain
6. Filecoin
Filecoin is a blockchain-based marketplace built by San Francisco-
based and venture-backed Protocol Labs, the creators of the
InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Filecoin made headlines last
year with its record breaking ICO, which raised an estimated
$257 million for the company in September, including buy-in from
traditional VC investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Union
Square Ventures, and Winklevoss Capital.
Filecoin is looking to disrupt the cloud storage industry. They are
attempting to create a distributed data storage network in which
participants earn the company’s crypto currency - called filecoin
- by leasing out their spare digital storage. The Filecoin can be
used within the network or exchanged either for more conventional
cryptocurrencies or fiat currencies through exchange platforms like
Coinbase.
7. Grid+
Energy is often cited as the industry outside of finance most
likely to see disruption from blockchain, and Grid+ is leading the
charge as the world's first blockchain-based energy retailer with
market-driven pricing.
It is common practice for electricity retailers to buy wholesale en-
ergy and sell it to their customers at over a 100% markup, despite
doing little more than billing you. Grid+ is looking to change all this.
They are offering consumers direct access to wholesale energy
markets through blockchain, creating a secure Ethereum-enabled
gateway that stores cryptocurrencies and processes payments for
electricity in real time.
8. PokitDok
Anybody who has ever worked in medical records will know that
they are often a confusing mess - part-digitized, part-handwritten
scraps of paper siloed across disparate locations. Blockchain has
the potential to revolutionize how individuals’ medical records are
stored, and it is already proving popular. Indeed, BIS Research
projects that 10-15% of healthcare entities will be integrating
blockchain in their operations by 2020.
California-based PokitDok is among a host of startups looking to
apply blockchain for healthcare verticals such as claims, pharmacy,
and identity management. PokitDok has developed DokChain, a
"distributed network of transaction processors operating on both
financial and clinical data across the healthcare industry," which,
according to CNBC, is already being tested by a consortium of
partners including Intel and Amazon, among others.
PokitDok’s platform-as-a-service plugs directly into 650 trading
partners to access real-time transactional data at scale, without
having to replace legacy systems. It is intended to provide a secure
26
By decentralizing data storage in this way, the company says it
can improve the resilience of the internet and make it harder for
governments to shut down access to certain sites and apps. Juan
Benet, the founder of Protocol Labs, told TechCrunch, "There’s a
ton of storage in the world that’s not getting used. Think of it like
Airbnb. You had people with rooms that weren’t being used; Airbnb
built a marketplace for them. We’re also creating a marketplace
for storage that’s decentralized so removes third parties, so you
can access your information in the future without worrying whether
this entity [like an AWS] will continue being around." While the
competition it is up against is large - Dropbox and AWS - it is a well
thought out project built by an experienced team, and one of the
few giant ICOs that may actually be justified.
Last year, Grid+ raised $29 million through its token pre-sale, which
will fund the development and launch of its blockchain-based
competitive retail provider in Texas. The company is aiming to pull
in up to 20,000 customers by the end of next year and 100,000 by
the end of 2019, at which point it expects to be processing around
120 gigawatt-hours of electricity purchases a month using the
blockchain. The company also plans to start licensing its technology
to utilities worldwide from 2019.
network for all sources of patient data, from EMRs to medical
devices and pharmacies, with the various APIs, as well as those
provided by others, connecting to a distributed blockchain network
rather than a hospital or pharmacy's central system. PolitDok
provides identity management to validate that each party involved
in the transaction is who they say they are, whether consumer
or provider. It also facilitates the immediate machine-to-machine
processing of financial transactions based on previously agreed
upon smart contracts, essentially eliminating the current 90-180
days for a claim to be processed.
The company has raised a total of $55.3 million from six funding
rounds, with investors including GIS Strategic Ventures, McKesson
Ventures, and New Atlantic Ventures.
9. uPort
Brooklyn-based uPort is a self-sovereign identity and data platform
that enables users to register a globally unique identifier to the
Ethereum blockchain, giving them control over their identity, private
keys, user accounts, and private data. They've also got their own
mobile app available on Android and iOS, the uPort ID app, which
is a mobile identity wallet that stores private keys and serves as the
foundation for interacting with Ethereum and web 2.0 applications.
They launched a pilot program late last year in Zug, Switzerland, to
register residents’ IDs on the blockchain. Through this, Residents
are able to unlock access to government eServices like online
voting and proof of residency. If successful, this will be rolled out to
other cities.
10. ODEM
The complexity of the educational system in the US is seeing costs
spiral out of control. ODEM is looking to revamp this broken system
by using blockchain technology to connect teachers around the
world directly with students. They are developing a global market-
place that will offer students tailored curriculums, programs, and
more, facilitating private learning that is more cost effective, more
accessible, and of higher quality than current systems.
In an interview with The Drum, ODEM CEO Richard Maaghul
explained that, "We’re strapping blockchain technology on
Excelorators’ network of more than 200 professors at top univer-
sities. By reducing the role of intermediaries, we strengthen the
relationship between those professors and students. Both sides
of the equation have more power to affect positive educational
outcomes."
With an experienced team of educators and technologists, ODEM
is regarded as one of the leading projects in the space. Their token
sale took place in February.
11. Pindify
Founded in 2015 by artist, economist, and developer Christoffer
Wallin, Pindify is a decentralized platform that enables providers of
music, art and media to connect directly with fans. Its intentions
are noble, cutting out intermediaries and enabling artists to
publish, distribute, and monetize their content while cultivating
a community of subscribers, with Pindify taking 9% from every
subscription.
Their website explains the way the technology works, noting, "The
power of attorney combined with the decentralized distribution of
digital content, creates a new paradigm shift in the era of digital
management culture. The Blockchain technology and smart
contracts can ensure user verification, registration and certification
of copyrights and intellectual property. Payments and transactions
are secured by offering a transparent and innovative online
marketplace."
Early reports suggest it is already attracting thousands of artists
and media creators and, having just completed a successful ICO in
January, could prove a game changer for the music industry.
12. Social Reality
Data ownership is an issue that is attracting more and more
attention, as awareness spreads around how companies make
money off us - often without our knowledge. Social Reality’s
BIGtoken pitch notes that, "As a consumer, you are a commodity
that generated $130 billion in revenue last year - and none of it
went to you."
Social Reality is a micro-cap advertising technology firm attempting
to become the first public company to deliver a transparent data
management and distribution system via a secure blockchain
platform. Through its BIG Platform, consumers will be able to claim
their data, decide how it gets used, and get paid themselves when-
ever it’s purchased. "BIG resolves the unanswered question others
in the landscape haven’t addressed: How can blockchain put the
consumer front-and-center in the consumer data and advertising
ecosystem?" the company said in the slideshow.
The BIG Platform will use an open-source governance structure
and token rewards, with its BIGtoken having already launched as
an ICO in January.
13. AidCoin
Trust in charities is at a low, with the recent Oxfam scandal in
particular detrimentally impacting the public's willingness to give to
good causes. AidCoin's worthy aim is to boost trust and transpar-
ency in the charity sector, using the Ethereum blockchain to track
donations made using cryptocurrencies to ensure they are spent
correctly.
AidCoin also allows charities to integrate a payment gateway,
called AIDPay, on their website so givers can donate directly using
different cryptocurrencies, which are then instantly converted into
AidCoin.
Backed by fundraising platform CharityStars, AidCoin raised
over $4 million in its pre-sale in November 2017 and took just 90
minutes to raise $16.5 million in its ICO. CharityStars has already
run a successful blockchain charity campaign, raising over $50,000
for a list of good causes that includes WWF and Save the Children.
Nicolai Oster, Head of ICO at Bitcoin Suisse said: “The AidCoin
project is an extremely worthwhile initiative that has the potential
to increase transparency, regain trust, and overhaul the nonprofit
sector. With the great success of the token sale, we believe that
the team has a good foundation and ground for achieving their
ambitious goal.”
27
feature article • blockchain
14. BlockchainTaxi
The drone market is expected to reach $16.7 billion in sales by
2022, despite numerous challenges still existing, particularly around
regulation. BlockchainTaxi combines blockchain technology with
historical flight data to automate operations such as air traffic
control, pre-arranged inspections of structures, disaster responses,
and any other large scale drone application needing logistical
coordination on a macro level. BlockchainTaxi’s Coin (BCT) serves
as medium of exchange for payments between service providers
and customers. Their official hardware partner is Passenger Drone,
the first company to successfully complete a manned drone flight.
Fulfilling a potentially vital function in such a fast-burgeoning market
should see them grow rapidly.
15. Graft
The clamor around cryptocurrencies has been astounding, but
there is one question many struggle to overcome - if it's money,
where do I spend it? Graft is looking to change this. "The fact that
consumers pay the transaction fees as opposed to merchants in
credit card payments discourages the mass adoption of Bitcoin,"
the company said. "Graft is looking to solve the problems of
transaction costs and settlement times with a merchant-centric,
agile blockchain.". They are looking to become the first global,
open-sourced payment gateway blockchain network built around
the merchants’ systems and processes and designed for Point-of-
Sale. It launched its mainnet on January 16, 2018.
Graft offers a payment blockchain that is compatible with major
existing payment technologies. This allows merchants to accept
both fiat and cryptocurrency payments, enjoy instant settlement,
and have seamless access to their funds in their preferred currency.
16. ConnectJob
The gig economy has been much criticized, with the likes of Uber
and Deliveroo receiving significant column inches for the way they
hire freelancers. ConnectJob is looking to revolutionize the gig econ-
omy, providing a blockchain-based marketplace for on-demand
services that connects both jobbers and those who need work
directly based on geolocation through an Uber-like counter. Users
exchange value without having to rely on third-party intermediaries
in a single click by using CJT (ConnectJob Tokens), a utility token
that can be used as payment for all services available on our app.
They can also use fiat money (euro, dollar) at an hourly rate that is
unique and pre-determined for each type of 'job'.
It has already launched an app on the Apple store and Playstore
and has been tested in Europe for three months successfully. At
time of writing, ConnectJob is in the second stage of its initial
coin offerings (ICOs), and has already raised nearly $5.3 million
in the process.
28
17. Civil
The anti-establishment nature of blockchain is perhaps exemplified
nowhere better than Civil. In the era of fake news, their crusade
to take down the fourth estate has really gained traction, and
they have already received $5 million in funding from blockchain
development firm ConsenSys.
Civil is looking to create a self-governing marketplace in which
users can directly sponsor newsrooms using the platform's 'CVL'
tokens, while enabling journalists to work together to run their own
publications. They are also seeking to protect journalists against
censorship and intellectual property disputes. Matthew Iles, Civil’s
founder, explains that using blockchain technology means “no one
will be able to remove the record or prevent her organization from
publishing what it wants to publish.”
Although there has been some skepticism as to whether it can
achieve its lofty ambitions, it has attracted its first publication,
Popula, an alternative news and politics site run by journalist Maria
Bustillos. Iles argues that "By providing the economic incentives
and governance structures for newsmakers – writers, editors,
photographers, fact-checkers  –  to self-organize, Civil offers a new
business model for journalism." It is a new business model that is
urgently needed.
18. Conjoule
Conjoule provides a blockchain platform designed to support
peer-to-peer trading of energy among rooftop solar panel owners
and interested public-sector or corporate buyers. The company
was created in Innogy’s Innovation Hub in 2015 and has already
raised investment of $9 million, including $5.3 million in funding
from Tokyo Electric Power Company and others last July. Conjoule
has been running a pilot in Germany since October 2016.
19. CEEK
CEEK is looking to create an authentic virtual concert experience
using VR and blockchain. CEEK already has an established VR kit,
which is available in the likes of Best Buy and Target, but they are
also now introducing blockchain technology onto their platform to
create a decentralized concert viewing experience. The company's
website explains that, "CEEK virtual reality environments are
governed by Ethereum Smart Contracts, allowing token holders
ability for flexible, tokenized ‘in-world’ interactions, rewards, voting,
contests, virtual goods and more ‘in-world’ transactions utilizing
ERC20 compliant Tokens called CEEK. Each CEEK Token holder
will be able to participate in virtual reality space for real-world celeb-
rity concerts, charity fund-raisers, sporting events, VR commerce,
classroom learning and much, much more as the exciting world of
virtual reality meets real-world opportunity through Smart Contract
governance."
CEEK even has a live, revenue-generating product and a deal with
Universal Music Studios granting them the rights to live perfor-
mances by the likes of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and U2, which puts
them some way ahead of other startups in the blockchain space.
20. MEvU
Founded in 2016 by Kelvin Coelho and Tim McCulloch, MEvU is
a peer-to-peer decentralized network that allows people to bet
on anything, anytime, against anyone operating on the Ethereum
blockchain network. By eliminating 3rd party gouging, they are able
to provide a historically low 2% fee for members. MEvU uses smart
contracts on the Ethereum blockchain to immutably and transpar-
ently inventory players funds and information, providing players with
confidence that their bets will be executed securely and quickly.
Pre-sale opened on January 22nd 2018, with 20,000,000 MVU
available.
In an announcement on CNN, Coelho asked, "how many times
do we hear the House always wins? I see a future where players
around the world will say 'let’s MEvU it!', challenging players to a
friendly competition to put their crypto where their mouth is."
21. LiveTree
London-based LiveTree is a blockchain-powered crowdfunding
platform for TV and film content. Founded in 2016, LiveTree has
this year launched Adept, a decentralized platform that connects
creatives and distributors, and enables consumers to fund projects
using tokens. LiveTree's Blossom TV platform will enable audiences
to back projects in this way: "Users will pledge support in Seed
[tokens] for the programming they are most interested in, which
will then fund the development of those projects." It claims to have
captured over 5% market share of the UK’s entertainment crowd-
funding sector and has already attracted a number of high-profile
partners, including the British Film Institute’s Future Labs, Film
London and Red Rock Entertainment, among others.
22. GUTS
Dutch blockchain start-up, GUTS, is tackling the problems of price
gouging by ticket touts and ticket fraud by making it impossible to
re-sell tickets illegally or at a higher price.
It works by registering ownership of SMART tickets on the block-
chain. You use these on your phone, rather than paper tickets.
It allows you to resell your ticket, but not for a profit. Its ICO in
December raised €6.3 million, and the startup has already sold
more than 10,000 tickets for 50 events over the last year. It is
projected to sell over 1 million tickets in 2019.
GUTS Tickets CEO and co-founder Maarten Bloemers explains
that: "Over 30% of all tickets are resold with mark-ups between
30% and 700% and these inflated prices are an ongoing problem
for artists and their fans. We believe in fair ticket prices for all, and
the GET token is an important first step towards eliminating the
fraudulent side of the secondary ticket-market."
23. SelfKey
Another startup using blockchain in the identity space is SelfKey.
They offer users, organizations, and individuals complete control of
their identity though a blockchain-based system that stores a user’s
data and documents locally on their own devices. This means
nobody can access it without permission, while also enabling
individuals to instantly provide sensitive documentation for things
like citizenship and residency information, company incorporation
information, coin exchanges, and so forth.
The SelfKey token (KEY) is used as the means of providing access
rights as well as verifying identity. Users, applicable parties, and
certifiers will need to stake a certain amount of KEY tokens to
enable an identity to be verified. The KEY token can also be used
to safely participate in token sales and other ICO events. According
to the company, the public portion of the initial coin offering (ICO)
in January hit its cap of $5.94 million in minutes. The pre-sale in
December easily raised its cap of $15.84 million four days before
the scheduled closing date in December
24. Voatz
Voatz (pronounced 'votes') is combining biometrics and blockchain
tech to revolutionize voting. Built on the HyperLedger framework,
the Voatz platform allows citizens to cast their ballots using any
smartphone or tablet, using biometric sensors to authenticate the
voter is who they claim to be. These votes are then stored on the
blockchain to ensure accurate record keeping.
Co-founder and CEO Nimit Sawhney says: "Past attempts at
internet based voting have failed or not gone mainstream due
to fundamental concerns around security, auditability and voter
anonymity. With Voatz, using biometrics for security and the
Blockchain for irrefutability, we are able to tackle all these challeng-
es and significantly streamline the process of voting and identity
verification."
The platform is currently in beta release. In January, Voatz raised
over $2.2 million in a funding round which saw investment from
the likes of Urban Innovation Fund and Oakhouse Partners. The
company intends to spend this on expanding its business develop-
ment team, growing its reach across the US, and accelerating the
development of several new product features.
25. Electron
London-based Electron is harnessing blockchain technologies
to design more efficient, resilient, and flexible systems for the
energy sector. Their vision is to "capitalize on the opportunities
29
feature article • blockchain
presented by the rapid changes in the energy market being driven
by decarbonization, decentralization, digitization and democratiza-
tion. We aim to create innovative, collaborative solutions, based on
the blockchain's guarantees of a secure, robust and transparent
platform. We will do this at the lowest cost whilst providing the
greatest benefit to all market participants."
They have already received investment from Tokyo Electric Power
Company (TEPCO) as well as the UK government. They also
received an award last year from the World Economic Forum for
their innovative works. They are currently leading a consortium that
aims to start testing an 'energy eBay' in the first half of this year that
Electron’s Chief Operating Officer, Joanna Hubbard, says will be “a
shared marketplace for energy assets to respond to pricing signals.”
26 REALISTO
Berlin-based REALISTO is a decentralized investing platform
looking to shake up the real estate market by providing a platform
enabling the crowdfunding of the world’s best real estate opportu-
nities. Real estate investment experts can present unique projects,
tokenize them, and offer them as curated investment opportunities.
REALISTO’s ICO will accept Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC)
contributions in exchange for REA, which can be used to invest in
curated Berlin and global projects. Returns are also paid in ETH.
REALISTO Co-CEO, Rouven Rosenbaum, explains, “The inspira-
tion behind REALISTO was to create access to investment oppor-
tunities that have so far been fraught with danger and inefficiency
for the individual investor. Additionally, it is our goal to provide a
stable and reliable platform for real estate experts to capitalize their
projects. With REALISTO, you can select what project to invest in,
manage your investment on our app, track real-world market value,
and then receive proportional returns.”
27. JoyToken
JoyToken is using smart contracts to build a 'trustless' gambling
ecosystem, with blockchain technology providing the means to
distribute winnings, determine values, and provide an audit trail of
transactions. Developers are rewarded for creating new games with
its JoyTokens, helping to create more entrepreneurial opportunities
and offsetting the lack of reputation by making all rules and the
base infrastructure of the game publicly viewable.
They have recently released an application programming interface
(API) alongside a slot game demo to developers in order to
showcase their smart contract functionality. The team includes
former PokerStars and Bet365 executives. CEO and Co-founder
Andrew MacDonald has 20 years of experience in retail and online
gaming with major blue-chip companies. He said: “We felt that
there was room to grow and that not only could we produce some
great games, but we could add another USP using blockchain
technology – true transparency. With this technology comes the
opportunity to log every single transaction on a smart contract and
30
for each individual player to audit their play should they wish to.
This builds an environment where trust in a system isn’t necessary
as we would have full disclosure with the player."
28. Binded
Binded helps photographers to protect their intellectual property
by creating a permanent record of their copyright. Users register a
photo on the platform and it is assigned a permanent, unalterable
timestamp which is added to a blockchain. This stamp acts as a
“proof of publishing” certificate which protects your photo from
being used without your consent.
The company has now raised $1.5m in total funding.
29. Thrive
Another startup claiming that it is giving control of the internet back
to the people is Thrive, a Blockchain-based Marketplace where
publishers and consumers can buy and sell advertising at very low
fees. People get paid for data sharing and for reviewing the quality
of each website in the ecosystem. They have already partnered
with a publisher network with over 220K websites, while public
pre-sales for its ICO topped €8 million.
30. Loci
Loci is a platform for intellectual property discovery and mining,
registering IP search results, time stamps, unique user IDs, and
relevant ‘prior art’ to the blockchain. Patented ideas can then be
bought and sold in the global market using LOCIcoins, whether this
is for the single entity or as part of an ‘investment pool’ - hopefully
to a corporation most capable of developing these inventions.
After three funding rounds, including an ICO in December 2017,
the company has raised a total of $11.9 million.
31. Ascribe
Berlin-based Ascribe enables creators and art collectors to own,
securely share, and trace the entire history of a digital work using
the blockchain. Its platform generates unique, cryptographic IDs
which are a composite of the digital artwork and the artist’s identity,
thereby permanently binding the artist and their work. They have
raised $2 billion so far in 3 funding rounds.
Trent McConaghy, CTO for Ascribe, ted CoinDesk: "What we
realized is we can use copyright law as the basis of what we're
doing and have that be really easy to use, and use the blockchain
as a way of recording these transactions of registering a copyright,
of transferring ownerships, of licensing from person A to B, things
like consignment or loaning."
32. Sun Exchange
Sun Exchange is a blockchain-based platform democratizing the
green economy by empowering customers to lease solar cells
bought on their platform to medium to large solar installations in
emerging markets. Solar panels are sold by the single solar cell,
slashing the cost of solar plant ownership to below $10.
“Solar power is the most promising technology to achieve a
zero-carbon future,” said Abraham Cambridge, serial solar energy
entrepreneur and CEO of Sun Exchange. “It’s the fastest growing
source of energy, but billions of people don’t own their own roof or
have the capital to get it. By breaking down solar panel ownership
to a single cell we reduce the cost of going solar by two orders
of magnitude and we’re utilizing empty roof space in some of the
sunniest cities on the planet, such as Dubai and Johannesburg. To
super-charge the process we’ve combined our solar leases with
another breakthrough technology – blockchain, namely Bitcoin.
Putting the two together empowers anyone to go solar and be part
of the global solar energy transformation with just a few taps on a
screen.”
The company recently raised $1.6 million in seed funding, which
will go towards expanding its business and global capabilities.
33. TraDove
TraDove is the first blockchain-based startup to focus on B2B-
specific solutions and tokens. They are looking to increase B2B
transparency by allowing the sharing of references and endorse-
ments for people, products, and companies. This will replace
current tedious and expensive payment methods such as a letter
of credits with smart contracts that authenticate, vet, and review
buyers and sellers.
TraDove already has more than 250,000 corporate buyers and
sellers spread across over 100 countries.
34. JOLYY
JOLYY is an online beauty booking platform upgraded using
blockchain technology that is disrupting the existing market for on-
line beauty booking. Salon managers can take appointments and
receive instant online payments, as well as engage with vendors
and order beauty products. Clients can compare a variety of salons
and providers, make appointments easily, and pay via tokens or
fiat money. Customers are also rewarded in JOY tokens when they
refer friends, recommend and comment on salons, professionals
and products, and add new salons, helping to grow and maintain
the ecosystem.
35. Elliptic
UK-startup Elliptic is building a blockchain forensics tool to identify
and track illicit bitcoin activity. Founded in October 2013 by Adam
Joyce, James Smith and Tom Robinson, it has so far raised a total
of $7 million.
And its applications don't stop at Bitcoin. CEO and co-founder
James Smith notes that, “Bitcoin is one of several areas we may
end up deploying this technology. What it really is is you build up
a view of a network. You look at the different entities in a network
— that’s a graph of entities — and we’re able to identify patterns
within that. Quite complex patterns that connect together different
entities in ways that might not be immediately obvious. And that’s
what allows us to identify things like money laundering or people
trying to obfuscate where their funds are flowing for other reasons.”
36. Bloom
Bloom is an end-to-end protocol for identity attestation, risk
assessment, and credit scoring that is designed to help individuals
lacking access to credit or the credit score it affords with access to
traditional banking mechanisms. Bloom allows both traditional and
digital currency lenders to serve billions of people who currently
cannot obtain a bank account or credit score.
“Bloom brings credit scoring to the blockchain,” Bloom Co-
Founder Daniel Maren said in an interview with the author. “Bloom’s
mission is to build a robust global credit infrastructure [that]
reduces fees, increases accessibility to credit, and makes credit
scoring fair.”
37 e-Chat
e-Chat is a multi-task, decentralized mobile app messenger that
allows users to do everything from in-app, single-click cryptocur-
rency payments to conference calls with as many as ten people.
Being built on blockchain technology means it offers 100% privacy
from institutions and governments for all interactions.
The developers assert that within six months the application will
reach 1,000,000 installments and 100,000,000 messages each
day.
38. Shopin
New York-based Shopin is a universal shopping app that uses
blockchain to deliver a hyper-personalized shopping experience
on retail websites. They create a universal shopper profile for
every customer. This information is shared by Shopin and can be
mined by retailers for special offers and targeted ads, however, it is
still entirely controlled by the customer.
31
feature article • blockchain
Shopin won the 2017 CoinAgenda Global blockchain startup
competition and has raised $4.6 million to date from Deep Fork
Capital, Outbound Ventures, as well as angel investors from
Google, ZocDoc and others.
39. DECENT
Swiss-based tech firm DECENT is an open-source, Blockchain-
driven content distribution platform that allows artists to efficiently
distribute virtually any form of content while retaining a far greater
chunk of the proceeds.
DECENT has already been courted by a number of content
providers and its ICO in 2015 raised 5,881 bitcoin, which at the
time was worth around $4.2 million.
The company explained: “Writers lose over 30-75% of their profits
when publishing with Amazon and musicians lose around 30%
when they sell a track on iTunes. [Blockchain] could free up a huge
chunk of spending in the global media and content distribution
industry; the current level of spending is estimated to grow from
$1.7 trillion in 2016 to over $2 trillion in 2019.”
40. Ripe
Ripe is working to combine blockchain with IoT to track produce
through the food supply chain, enabling food producers, shippers,
and processors to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
The company maintains a shared ledger fed by data from special-
ized scanners and sensors located through the food ecosystem,
forming an immutable record of food items. Founder Raja
Ramachandran wrote on Forbes that, "It can capture live growing
conditions, transport data and even capture the chemistry make up
of produce to determine flavor profiles and ultimately taste." Ripe
recently carried out a pilot to determine flavor profiles and quality
of tomatoes on Ward’s Berry Farm, a 180-acre farm southwest of
Boston, which it will expand if successful.
41. RecordsKeeper
Founded in 2016, RecordsKeeper aims to replace the cloud stor-
age technologies like Dropbox or Google Drive. It is a Blockchain-
based document story solution powered by high-end Encryption &
Blockchain, allowing you create verifiable & immutable records of
any types of data which are not possible in traditional technologies
like MySQL and Oracle.
42. BigchainDB
BigchainDB is attempting to do for databases what Bitcoin's
blockchain did for ledgers, enabling both developers and enterprise
to deploy blockchain proof-of-concepts, platforms, and applica-
32
tions using the scalable blockchain database it has developed. This
database is capable of one million writes per second throughput,
storing petabytes of data and sub-second latency.
Bruce Pon, Founder/CEO BigchainDB and ascribe.io, said:
"BigchainDB was built on top of an enterprise-grade distributed
DB, from which BigchainDB inherits high throughput, high capacity,
a full-featured NoSQL query language, efficient querying, and
permissioning. Nodes can be added to increase throughput and
capacity."
To date, it has raised a total of $5.4 million in two rounds from five
investors, with the most recent raising $3.37m.
43. Aurus
Aurus are aiming to bridge the gap between the traditional gold
market and the crypto economy of the future. Aurus utilize a gold-
backed cryptocurrency accessible to both individuals and organi-
zations for trade and use. One AurusGOLD (AWG) coin represents
one gram of 99.99% LBMA (London Bullion Market Association)
approved gold and tokens are redeemable at any time through the
Asset Reconstruction Smart Contract.
The aim is to make gold more liquid and decentralized, essentially
bringing it into the digital age. On the site, CEO and Co-Founder of
Aurus, Stefan Gergely states that "because it’s a cryptocurrency,
one can trade 0.00001 AWG or $0.0004 worth of gold. This is how
we’re making gold more liquid."
44. Elemential Labs
Elemential are a Mumbai-based startup set to fully launch later
in 2018 who are invested in developing decentralized systems
and blockchain developer tools. They are currently working with
strategic partners to establish blockchain technology in the Indian
market. They have so far been involved in building products used
for trade finance applications, payment systems, compliance
solutions, and more. Recently, Elemential provided the technology
for a know-your-customer data trail involving blockchain in India's
biggest stock exchange.
45.Smart Valor
Smart Valor are a blockchain startup founded in February 2017
by Olga Feldmeier with an initial investment round of £1.5 million.
Based in the Swiss Crypto Valley, Smart Valor promise to reinvent
private banking by providing a platform for investors, assets issuers
and facilitators to exchange values globally. This way, they aim to
build bridges between traditional and crypto finance.
In a press release, Feldmeier stated, "For a long time, a diverse
investment space with assets kept in a stable and reputable
jurisdiction, reasonably well-shielded from political or inflationary
uncertainties—this used to be the exclusive privilege of the very rich
and powerful. Today, the technology and regulatory transformation
gives us the opportunity to change this."
46.Telcoin
Telcoin is focused on disrupting the international remittance market
currently dominated by large companies such as Money Gram.
They want to use cryptocurrency and telecoms to provide very
cheap transfers to empower the 'little people', taking back power
from big companies. They also plan to use their currency to utilize
roaming spending, international aid and online payments in general.
With their partnership with mobile operators, they are in the
position to reach a huge wealth of potential customers.
47. Otonomos
Singapore-based Otonomos's platform empowers entrepreneurs to
incorporate their businesses on a digital distributed ledger. Its on-
line service allows users to form, fund, and govern their companies
on the blockchain simply by opening a digital share wallet on it.
Former CEO Han Verstraete told FinTech website Let’s Talk
Payments that: "We increasingly see that the underlying Bitcoin
protocol could become a ledger for broader financial assets. Cash
was the blockchain’s first application. Traditionally, it’s held either in
banks or under people’s mattresses so to say, and Bitcoin made
cash digital. Commodities especially gold is next: by linking digital
tokens to a physical bar of gold or any other commodity, its own-
ership can be irreversibly documented hence it can be exchanged
peer-to-peer. But if you look around for broader financial assets,
more than 80% of the world’s financial value is held in a legal
container called the limited company. So we are bringing company
shares on the blockchain."
49. CoinLION
First conceived in June 2017, CoinLION is the world's first crypto-
currency exchange with built-in portfolio management. "Managing
cryptocurrencies and digital assets is a complicated and confusing
process,” said Joshua DeWitt, CEO and Co-Founder at CoinLion,
speaking to Global Newswire. “We are building a powerful trading
platform that makes managing digital assets easy and efficient.
CoinLion contains a unique portfolio management tool and public
profile system that rewards users for sharing portfolios, strategies,
and information relating to the management of digital assets."
50. ShoCard
Based in Palo Alto, ShoCard uses blockchain technology to verify
identity. ShoCard co-founder Jeff Weitzman told TechCrunch:
‘We’ve created a digital identity card that is as easy to use as
a driver’s license but it’s so secure that a bank can rely on it.
We’re using public and private keys, data hashing, multi-factor
authentication.’
Founded in 2015, ShoCard raised $1.5m in venture capital
shortly after launch and in May last year struck up its first major
partnership with airline IT company SITA, joining forces to build
a proof-of-concept for a technology streamlining the way airlines
verify passenger identities. IQ

48. Crowdwiz

Hong Kong-based Crowdwiz's platform offers fully decentralized,

investments powered by the wisdom of the crowd. It is structured
around cutting out the intermediary and allowing investors to
deal directly with other investors with access to funding, bids,
and prices that might otherwise be blocked by a middle man. In
an interview with Coinspeaker, the developers claimed that the
"CrowdWiz fund allows the crowd, not fund managers, banks or
middlemen with conflicting interests, to decide on how the general
fund is spent." To date, they have raised $6,677,182.

Founder Slavena Savcheva stated that "there is a big problem in

the investment world today, in which fund managers overcharge
for fees and sometimes withhold certain information from clients.
CrowdWiz will change all this – giving the smart crowd, not a
biased third party, the power to ultimately decide how their money
is invested."

33
Page Title •

S
ingapore is something of an economic miracle,
building itself into a real port of affluence
since it gained independence from Malaysia in
1965. Today, it is a hub of innovation. Last year, Nestpick,
a Berlin-based startup that analyzed popular startup

Focus on:
locations, ranked it the best city in the world for startups,
based on metrics such as existing startup ecosystems,
quality of life, salary, cost of living, social security, and
benefits. The city-state also jumped ahead of European

Singapore economies Germany, Switzerland, and Finland into third

place in the 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index.
 focus on:Singapore • innovation

There are a number of reasons behind

this, in particular the pipeline of talent in
the region. “Singapore has always placed
strong focus on educating her populace,
especially in STEM disciplines,” said Yeo
Kiat Seng, professor and associate provost
at the Singapore University of Technology
and Design.
The government's innovation-friendly
policies have also done much to incentivize
businesses to work harder on innovating
and protecting those innovations, offering a
tax deduction of 200% on intellectual prop-
erty registration fees. This will be capped at
SGD100,000 ($75,786). The government
further set aside SGD145 million ($109.87
million) over the next three years to expand
the IMDA’s Tech Skills Accelerator (Tesa)
This drive has seen a number of major
companies base their innovation efforts into
the city. For example, one of the world's
largest snacks companies, Mondeléz
International, recently announced that it is
to open its newest global Technical Center
in Jurong, with a focus on developing
new products and technologies for some
of the company’s iconic brands. Maurizio
Brusadelli, EVP & President AMEA (Asia
Pacific, Middle East and Africa), explained

200%
initiative. that: “Singapore’s fantastic infrastructure,
thriving RDQI ecosystem and the collabora-
tive approach of government organizations
and public-private partnerships make it a
perfect place for innovation. This is one
of the many reasons why we have made
TAX DEDUCTION Singapore the home of our AMEA region.” IQ

"Singapore is great because of the strong and diverse talent pool, the excellent
research infrastructure we can tap into, and the collaboration opportunities with
academia, startup, and industry peers."
Sher Lin Ee, Regional Head, R&D at Evonik
This July 11-12 will also see Singapore play host to
the CxO Innovation Festival 2018. Leading executives
in Big Data, Innovation, Strategy, and Corporate
Finance from a diverse array of industries will come
together to discuss solutions to the challenges they
are facing and how they are innovating to drive
success in their organizations.
JULY 11-12
CXO INNOVATION FESTIVAL 2018

35
interview • digital

VR AND BIG DATA: A MATCH

MADE IN HEAVEN?
Interview with Cindy Mallory, Co-Chair of the blockchain committee
at the VR/AR Association

Cindy Mallory is co-chair of the blockchain committee at the VR/AR You're heavily involved in VR.
Association, an international Research Committee shaping the VR/ What challenges do you see in
AR location-based entertainment space. She was formerly a Business analytics that are unique to the
Analyst and VR Game Developer at DreamSail Games, creator of VR space compared to other fields
award winning titles that includes Blade Ballet. Her focus at DreamSail in gaming?
was on analytics management and she assisted in virtual reality de-
velopment by defining, analyzing, and documenting requirements for The advent of new technologies to collect
game creation with emergent technology. data for VR gaming is already exciting.
Platforms such as cognitiveVR and Ghostline
Hi Cindy. You've had a fascinating a list of stakeholder aligned goals. You can are analytic solutions that map out user
career trajectory so far. How did split the goals into dimensions with metrics interaction, visualize sessions, collect
you get started? and then figure out what tools for measuring hardware data, and encourage A/B testing
data work best for you. and feedback fueled design. There are so
I studied biochemistry with an emphasis on many SDKs being developed to assist with
mathematics and physics. Methods for lab I created a KPI database for DreamSail game analytics that the challenge is not
research primed me for data analysis; it’s Games that segments indicators into about innovation; it’s an ethical problem. A
what I was already doing when I calculated Marketing, Financial, and In-game. During lot of the new techs depend on real-time
enzyme reaction rates, ran kinetic assays, the developmental process, KPIs can serve processing of the player’s physiological and
read UV wavelengths and modified exper- as thermometers gauging interest. Alexa, behavioral information.
iments for a better run. That was my first Google Analytics, Facebook Insights,
brush with trend analysis and predictive SteamWorks Financial, GameAnalytics, and The way a user interacts with VR allows for
modeling. My project was the isolation and StreamHatchet all provide data that can be extremely pervasive information collection.
purification of a recombinant cloned enzyme used to monitor social mention and efficacy Bio-haptics and positional tracking will
for biofuel application. I ran experiments of marketing campaigns. granularly improve with each iteration of
geared toward yield purifications of a protein virtual reality hardware. As tech improves
grown in E-coli until I made a profile on a Interesting. What challenges do the feeling of immersion will as well, but it
dating site... you face in tracking KPIs and shouldn’t cost personal data to access.
what advice would you give for A reason I joined the VR/AR Association
A NYC game designer threw a 3D model of those looking to overcome them? Entertainment Industry Committee was to
my research project into a game engine. I help establish standards for the VR space in
was hooked. I started dabbling with a few I created a system to record and archive regards to data collection, consent, storage,
coding languages, business strategy, and weekly snapshots for my KPIs that allows and transmission of personal information.
data-driven marketing. I accepted a position me to interact with webmaster and analytic
at DreamSail Games, a Midtown VR creative suites in a consistent and thorough method. What do you see as the most ex-
studio, as their business analyst. I geek out Logging the information isn’t difficult. The citing developments in VR? Where
whenever I can transfer my methodologies toughest hurdles present themselves do you see the industry heading?
from biochem to business. with effective report generation and data
visualization. I try to map out progress in the industry by
The gaming industry has got following startup acquisitions and venture
significantly more analytical I’m a girl that’s familiar with methodically capital financing. A new wave peripheral VR
in recent years. Why are KPIs pouring over data sets. It’s easy enough to company to watch, Ultrahaptics, is offering
important to track in video game list and tally values, the real challenge hits developmental kits for tactile virtual button
development and which do you with evaluation. The ability to sort through technology via ultrasound transducer arrays.
feel are the most important? troves of information and pick out trends to Inside out tracking is also a hot tech for
strategically bolster marketing proposals... VR and AR, along with volumetric capture.
Every studio has different analytical that’s a skill I constantly hone. It’s important I’m keeping a close eye on 8i (high fidelity
documentation requirements based on to be able to translate information from a volumetric video) and Fove (low latency eye
size, funding, methodology, and industry spreadsheet format into clear, visual reports tracking and foveated rendering). I’m also
standards. I think it’s important to first break that allow your team to make informed excited for the OEM ecosystem explosion.
down the needs of your studio and create decisions. High-end VR will become more acces-

36
sible as PC powered HMDs in the range of
$300-500 become available to consumers.
Manufacturers such as Dell and Lenovo are
hustling to put out HMD kits to accompany a
line of Windows 10 VR ready computers.
On a personal level, I am really excited
about mixed reality. It’s challenging to share
a spatial experience through traditional
2d mediums such as photo or video. A
shaky, flattened recording of a player’s
POV doesn’t convey the presence of virtual
reality. Mixed reality is a fantastic way to
introduce an audience to VR...and it just
looks really cool. Tell me you never stared
at a video game and wished yourself in the
environment. Traditional green screen set
ups require aligning a physical camera with
a camera in the virtual world to composite
capture mixed-reality gameplay. This method
is time-consuming and tedious. I’m so
geeked about the prototyped LIV Cube.
It’s a portable green screen room that will
revolutionize how content creators approach
VR streaming. I’m happy to announce that
DreamSail Games partnered with LIV to
bring one of the first 50 LIV cubes to NYC
(and the Game Analytics Summit!).
Will games studios be able to
share data and analytics insights
to develop better VR or is the
competition too great?
Absolutely, it’s already happening. I’ve been
lucky enough to meet some amazing game
developers while exhibiting at conventions
like GDC, Twitchcon, and PAX that are kind
enough to answer my ridiculous emails.
I send out requests (with smiley faces)
that ask intimate development questions
regarding active session stats on their
games, efficacy of marketing campaigns,
and developmental systems inquiries ranging
from production duration to team size to
agile software preferences. The industry
guidance and support system I’ve cultivated
for my team demonstrate a willingness in the
VR space to share for the greater good. We
are in uncharted territory with a disruptive
technology. Online communities offer
support while developers create tutorials,
give talks, and publish devlogs.
Coopetition, otherwise known as coopera-
tive competition, is a principal chronicled in
game theory. The mechanisms of juxtaposed
competition and cooperation take place
in industries where there is a congruity of
interests. The collective contribution of
competing companies creates a phenome- Top 5 Most
non of encouragement that fosters research
and knowledge sharing. This, in turn, Innovative In...
accelerates content creation, VR develop-
ment accessibility, and the rate of consumer
Tech
By R&D Spend
adoption. As DreamSail progressed past
R&D and pre-production into vertical slice
development, I’ve gained mentors and
1
friends who work for VR studios vying for the
same small demographic. In the early stages South Korea
of production, insights, and partnerships R&D Expense: $12.72bn
provided by pioneering developers, who are Toal Rev: $167.68bn
rooting for us to succeed, have made all the % of Rev spent on R&D:
difference. 7.58%
Finally, there has been a lot in the
news over recent years around 2
issues around gender in the gam-
ing industry. Do you think gender
is still an issue in gaming? Do you United States
see companies doing enough to R&D Expense: $10.05bn
improve the issue, and what else Toal Rev: $215.64bn
do you think could be done? % of Rev spent on R&D:
4.66%
We all remember Gamergate. The struggle
for inclusion in gaming culture for women
and non-cis individuals is still raging. White 3
papers demonstrate a disparity in access
to virtual reality and highlight a gap in
United States
wages and hire for women working in VR
R&D Expense: $6.30bn
development. As a woman accustomed to Toal Rev: $49.25bn
being a minority in my field, it’s devastating % of Rev spent on R&D:
to compile audience segmentation reports 12.78%
that indicate the “smart” thing to do is
design a game geared towards placating
the male millennials dominating the pool.
4
This being said, VR is a space that is ripe for
equality. There are amazing communities of
developers and evangelists formed around Finland
the movement to support Women in VR.
R&D Expense: $4.66bn
Toal Rev: $24.93bn
% of Rev spent on R&D:
An issue that has to be addressed is
18.68%
harassment in the virtual space. Traditional
platforms for gaming kept trolling and
intimidation limited to voice, messages, and
5
avatar actions on a 2D screen. With the
advent of social VR, cases of spatial harass- Sweden
ment have already sprung up. Developers R&D Expense: $3.49bn
need to proactively address concerns over Toal Rev: $24.52bn
VR etiquette and strive to stamp out toxic % of Rev spent on R&D:
behaviors. I feel like companies are aware of 14.21%
Source data: PwC
inequality issues and as long as the com-
munity is proactive in demanding safe game
spaces, developers are more than happy to
comply. IQ
37
Focus on • marketing

Top Marketing Automation

Tools for 2018
Provided by:

M
arketing Automation Software includes programs and technologies the Visitor ID feature can identify business
that allow marketing departments to more effectively complete and visitors’ organizations based on their IP
streamline tasks like email, phone, and social media to grow revenue address. It allows you to build landing
faster and improve the alignment of marketing and sales. Not only does pages and helps maintain your leads and
it have CRM integration capabilities, but it includes features like campaign man- bridges the gaps across departments,
agement and marketing analytics. Do you want to increase web traffic? What about especially marketing and sales.
your company’s productivity? Continue reading for the top marketing automation
solutions for 2018. Hatchbuck
HubSpot Because it’s used primarily by enterprises, Another viable option for small business-
it best manages larger scale campaigns es, onboarding and following up with
With 83% of the users being marketers across various channels, with heavy report- customers is made easy with access to
from small and mid-size businesses, ing. The workflow interface is good, and automated email campaigns, email builders,
Hubspot is one of the most popular you can design campaigns both simple and and templates. The email builder is user
platforms on the market. Automate your complex. Adobe Campaign is the choice for friendly, and the automated campaigns are
email campaigns without using code, and you if your email marketing campaigns need capable of alerting you when a customer
personalize each of them using details more competitive analytics and challenging takes action. It’s the equivalent of Hubspot
from your CRM. The visual editor feature email streams. There’s even a feature that but designed for smaller businesses, and
allows you to map out your workflow in real tracks previous behaviors and interests, so nurtures leads just as effectively. It’s an
time, whether the campaign is simple or you can always personalize your emails to affordable solution for beginners with an
multifaceted. Set up internal notifications to their fullest extent. In addition, it’s a solution exceptional support desk.
alert your team when a contact makes an for more dynamic CRM campaigns.
important advancement. Overall, Hubspot Automating your digital communication
is a comprehensive marketing solution that IBM Watson Campaign workflow will speed up the process, and
is user friendly. Plus, Hubspot Academy Automation foster the relationships between your
offers video and classroom training to better company’s departments. If you want to
understand the software. Managing email, social, mobile, and lead keep up with the demands of your industry
management campaign processes are and better understand how your customers
Marketo made easier with IBM Watson Campaign are interacting with your interface, these
Automation. It delivers consistent expe- marketing automation systems will propel
Just like HubSpot, there’s minimal coding, riences, and provides analytical insights you forward. Of course, the tools listed here
but a higher percentage of users are from - several options are available to conduct aren’t your only options. Be sure to check
mid-size companies. From email marketing reporting. Marketers can achieve consist- out reviews of all marketing automation
and landing pages to SEO and analytics, it ency through the tracking of customer tools available to you on TrustRadius to
allows you to engage with your prospects behavior through a multitude of sources, to better understand the landscape, and
on a personal level, without the help of IT. better create an identity. If you’re a mid- select software with confidence.
Marketo allows you to trigger emails off sized company or enterprise looking for
behaviors like social shares, web visits, or an automation system with detailed email Author: Kelsey Taylor is a creative writer
check ins at in person events. It leverages marketing, this is a good choice. The mail- and lover of all things digital media. She's
activity and demographic based scoring to merge function adds a different dimension a poet, educator, and regular contributor
make funnel metrics more efficient, and it to your marketing approach. to TrustRadius where she continues to
can track lead lifecycles and revenue stages write about software and tips for B2B
from various reports. SharpSpring companies. IQ

Adobe Campaign If you’re a small business looking for a low

cost solution, this is a great option. The
As part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, CMS capability is universal, and the email
Adobe Campaign integrates well with other marketing is behavior based. Not only can
Adobe systems like Analytics and Target. you track your visitors and their journey, but

38
 Page Title •
DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE STATS

11% 31% 7%
UK's TOTAL GDP would be

of businesses have cur-
rent plans to improve the
ethnic diversity of their
senior management team
Grant Thornton's latest 'Diversity
Snapshot’
of leaders see ethnic diver-
sity as important to the
success of their business in
the future
Grant Thornton's latest 'Diversity
Snapshot’
better off if workplace
discrimination based on gen-
der, sexual orientation and
ethnicity was eliminated
Centre for Economics and Business
Research (Cebr) report

79 cents
amount a women earns for every
dollar a man makes in the US
Companies in the top
quartile for racial and
ethnic diversity are

Companies whose top management is at least

half female post returns on equity that are
35%
more likely to have
financial returns above

19% higher their respective national

industry medians
than average McKinsey&Company
Credit Suisse Research Institute

Companies in the top quartile

Parents are for gender diversity are

2.5 times more likely

to query Google about whether their
15% more likely
to have financial returns above their
2-year-old is a genius if that 2-year- respective national industry medians.
old is a boy - Joanne Lipman McKinsey&Company

39
event report •

Digital strategy
FEBRUARY 27 & 28 | 2018
MARRIOTT MARQUIS
NEW YORK

innovation
Festival

W
hat do Morgan
Stanley, NBC,
and GE have in
common?

Surprisingly - when it comes to

digital strategy at least - quite
a lot.

In February of this year, senior

executives descended on New
York for the Digital Strategy
Innovation Festival. Thought
leaders from these three, as well
a diverse array of other leading
organizations, came together
to discuss their success stories
and challenges - and found a
surprising amount of crossover
in the process.
We heard from HSBC about
how the bank had adapted its
digital strategies to deal with
changing millennial consumer
behavior, how Accuweather was fostering a culture of experimentation, and how
Miami Heat’s shift to becoming a mobile-first organization had transformed their
business.
The event also included an entire stage dedicated to the issue of female representa-
tion in decision-making roles, an issue that is particularly topical given the events of
the past year. Here, women blazing a trail at the likes of PepsiCo and BASF made a
positive argument for inclusion as a driver of innovation.
Read on for some of the key
takeaways you might have
missed.

40
Digital
Marketing
summit
event Takeaways

Dia Simms left, siufhasf wefw right

Dia Sims, President of P. Diddy's business empire Combs Enterprises, on the

importance of data and how it was transforming the make up of marketing teams

“We grossly underutilize the data we have
available. We need people like mathema-
ticians, people that are dedicated full time
to quant. But agencies aren't structured
that way, marketing teams aren't struc-
tured that way. If you want to be success-
ful in digital marketing, you need to put
the science behind that conversation."
"We all face the challenge of having online success with an
offline result, and it's difficult to know what worked and what
didn't work. We're all dealing with the same correlational
data where you hope it worked because at the same time your
content ran, you saw a spike in sales, but how do you know? As
data becomes more and more niche and as Amazon continues
to take over the world, we'll get to see more direct retail inter-
faces and should get better at this."

Inc. Global Vice President

of Marketing, Patrick Hain-
ault's 5 rules for innovation:
1 Do it step by step. “You won’t solve
everything all at once. The home run
is fun, but incremental is the approach
4 Collaborate. “You have to be ready
to leverage other people’s assets.” 

that works.” 
5 Study, learn, borrow. “Many of the
most innovative companies got there

2 Be deliberate and in-

quiry-based. “A/B testing isn’t for
fun - what are trying to do?” 
by a desire to learn, by not being afraid to
borrow ideas or stick two ideas together.
What’s the next innovation you want
to latch on to? AI? 3D printing? Voice

3 Everything is on the table. “Keep an

open mind. Why restrict yourself ?
A few years ago who would have thought
marketing? Whatever the idea is, decide
when is the right time for you to jump
on it.”
that people would rush to purchase Al-
exa, a device that listens to you 24/7?“ 
41
event report •

event Takeaways

Digital
Justin Sellman, Vice President of E-Com-

Strategy merce and Digital Strategy, Ghurka, on

how to implement a strategy for using us-
er-generated content:

Summit “Look for the technology partner who’s going to enable you to
achieve what you want not just from a front-facing aesthetic
standpoint, but from an analytics standpoint, so you know and
you can prove that what you’re doing is actually meaningful for
the bottom line. Do it. Test it. And always be improving on it.”

Do it. Test it. And always be improving on it.”

Justin Sellman

"First, ask the question, "What does is Finally, remember that every customer is trying to tell a story
say about your customer that they use about themselves in which they're the protagonist, where in the
your brand?". We go out there and we end they have the great life and the happily ever after. So what
Deb Gabor, ask customers how satisfied they are is your customer's story and how do you make them the hero?
Sol Marketing with our brand, how likely are you to Because every single thing they buy, from you and everyone
CEO and Au- recommend use. We very rarely ask this else, is helping them to construct that story."
thor of 'Brand- question, so 99-100% of the time they're
ing is Sex: Get going to tell you something you don't
Your Customer know, because you've never asked this
Laid', listed question.
three key ques-
tions you need Second, ask what is the singular benefit
to ask about that customers get from you that they
your brand" can't from anyone else? This speaks to
indispensability. The way to ask this
question is 'what would your life be like
if we took this brand away from you?'
What would happen if you removed this
brand from life. It speaks to meaningful
differentiation. And it's rarely a feature -
the functional and emotional benefit of
which can always be imitated by some-
one else.

42
 event Takeaways
Women In Strategy
“As a woman in the seat of CEO, having
to tell my story of perfume, most men
cannot relate. They think, ‘well, it’s a
thing, it’s an industry?’ So you tell them
it’s a $14 billion industry, and their eyes
Mariya Nurislamo- light up and they go, ‘huh, like in the
va, Co-Founder and US?’, and you’re like, ‘yes, in the US’.
CEO of fragrance The thing is, men understand numbers.
subscription service So when fundraising, you have to know
Scentbird, on rais- your numbers better than any guy in the
ing funds as a female room. The fact is, we’re not walking into
entrepreneur: a playing field that is even across genders.
We don’t have to be just be as good as
the guy next to us, we have to be better.
You need come better rehearsed, better
prepared, and you know your numbers.
As women, we tend to lead with emotion
and a lot less with intellect, tending to
lead off with ‘we have this great story,
we’re so passionate, we’ve been working
on this baby for however many years’.
Men, on the other hand, just go, ‘I just
made you x number of dollars’, and
that gets the investor in the right state
of mind. So first, I think we have to be
better prepared, and second, we have to
be able to tell our story through numbers
because that is what investors under-
stand.”
Vimeo’s CEO Anjali Sud, describing how
they have embraced their competition rather
than trying to fight them.
“We have been competing with
YouTube for over a decade, but
recently have launched tools for
our creators to help them get dis-
tribution on YouTube. We decided
to become friends with YouTube
as this was solving a problem that
our creators had."
43
Page Title •

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

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We want to hear from you

IQ@THEIEGROUP.COM

44