Author Archives: Content in Context

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About Content in Context

Content in Context helps companies to define the market for their products and services, to identify customers and build the business pipeline, and to develop their content marketing strategies. By working with our clients to design, build and grow their business, our primary focus is to extract commercial value from unique assets, including knowledge, data, know-how, processes and transactional information.

Fear of the Robot Economy….

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A couple of articles I came across recently made for quite depressing reading about the future of the economy. The first was an opinion piece by Greg Jericho for The Guardian on an IMF Report about the economic impact of robots. The second was the AFR’s annual Rich List. Read together, they don’t inspire me with confidence that we are really embracing the economic opportunity that innovation brings.

In the first article, the conclusion seemed to be predicated on the idea that robots will destroy more “jobs” (that archaic unit of economic output/activity against which we continue to measure all human, social and political achievement) than they will enable us to create in terms of our advancement. Ergo robots bad, jobs good.

While the second report painted a depressing picture of where most economic wealth continues to be created. Of the 200 Wealthiest People in Australia, around 25% made/make their money in property, with another 10% coming from retail. Add in resources and “investment” (a somewhat opaque category), and these sectors probably account for about two-thirds of the total. Agriculture, manufacturing, entertainment and financial services also feature. However, only the founders of Atlassian, and a few other entrepreneurs come from the technology sector. Which should make us wonder where the innovation is coming from that will propel our economy post-mining boom.

As I have commented before, the public debate on innovation (let alone public engagement) is not happening in any meaningful way. As one senior executive at a large financial services company told a while back, “any internal discussion around technology, automation and digital solutions gets shut down for fear of provoking the spectre of job losses”. All the while, large organisations like banks are hiring hundreds of consultants and change managers to help them innovate and restructure (i.e., de-layer their staff), rather than trying to innovate from within.

With my home State of Victoria heading for the polls later this year, and the growing sense that we are already in Federal election campaign mode for 2019 (or earlier…), we will see an even greater emphasis on public funding for traditional infrastructure rather than investing in new technologies or innovation.

Finally, at the risk of stirring up the ongoing corporate tax debate even further, I took part in a discussion last week with various members of the FinTech and Venture Capital community, to discuss Treasury policy on Blockchain, cryptocurrency and ICOs. There was an acknowledgement that while Australia could be a leader in this new technology sector, a lack of regulatory certainty and non-conducive tax treatment towards this new funding model means that there will be a brain drain as talent relocates overseas to more amenable jurisdictions.

Next week: The new productivity tools

More musings on ICOs and cryptocurrencies

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In the same week that SEC launched a spoof ICO (was anyone really fooled?), I attended two informational sessions about cryptocurrency that revealed much about the ignorance, greed, fear and misinformation that continues to plague this new asset class. Thank goodness that rational thinking still prevails…Much of the public dialogue around Blockchain, bitcoin and cryptographic assets has been along the lines of:

1. Everyone and their dog is trying to sell ICOs; so

2. FOMO is driving trading momentum; but

3. Price volatility deters many institutional investors; while

4. Regulators don’t really know what, where or how to regulate the industry.

But out of this uncertainty, clarity will emerge in the form of a new asset class, with appropriate regulatory structures, disciplined markets, and sophisticated investment products.

The first session I attended, described as a “Beginners’ Guide to Cryptocurrency”, felt a bit like one of those “get rich quick” seminars, where greedy (but unsuspecting) punters are sold the dream of timeshare apartments and highly leveraged equity warrants. While I can’t blame the audience (some of them knew no better), I would take issue with the presenter – the CEO and founder of a company in the process of launching an ICO. Admitting that they had limited technical knowledge of Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and token sales, the presenter also revealed limited knowledge of securities regulations and tax legislation when it comes to crypto and ICOs.

Meanwhile, the second session I was invited to attend (featuring representatives from brokers, exchanges, fund managers, Blockchain platforms and compliance experts) was far more informed. Even though some of the topics covered are still full of hypotheticals, the speakers all gave credible accounts of their respective positions. Compared to the first session, this forum gave me far more confidence that there are experts out there who know what they are talking about.

When it comes to cryptocurrencies and digital assets, I think the a reason why regulators, policy makers, traditional capital markets and advisers are often bamboozled is this is the first asset class in decades (if not centuries) that has not relied on a trickle down effect (in terms of production, distribution and exchange). In theory, anyone with access to Satoshi’s white paper, and who was capable of deploying the open source code, and who maintained a suitable CPU could have started mining, accumulating and trading bitcoin – and all without leaving their own home. And while it still forms a small proportion of total global capital assets, this industry has grown exponentially in less than 10 years.

Having developed the technology, identified the value proposition and established the asset class, the industry is now waiting for the appropriate regulatory tools so it can get on and build the infrastructure – from security tokens to atomic swaps, from Blockchain interoperability to custody solutions, from robust wallet integration to self-sovereign digital identity management.

Next week: Fear of the Robot Economy….

 

 

Corporate purpose, disruption and empathy

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There’s been a renewed debate recently, about corporate purpose: why do companies and organisations exist?

Partly this existential angst comes from a sense of feeling redundant – sunset industries, declining and non-existent markets, outmoded technology, irrelevant products and services. The whole evolutionary model, survival of the fittest, etc.

Partly it comes from a shift in the balance of power – from access to resources, markets and technology, to the future of work offering people more choices in the ways they can generate their living.

Whether companies face disruption or decay, their purpose has to change and adapt accordingly – look at how Kodak is backing a project to issue cryptographic tokens to help professional photographers track the use of their IP.

Equally, employees are more invested in working on interesting ideas, and more interested in working for businesses that align with their values, rather than buying into a corporate purpose. So it’s as much about the “how” of an organisation as much as the “what” and the “why”.

I sometimes find it hard to feel much empathy for companies or industries that become outmoded – although I can feel some empathy for the people who lose their jobs as a result. However, if the political and economic response to declining industries is to focus on job losses (or job subsidies), it tends to overlook where the new opportunities are actually coming from – even though this growth does not always offer traditional jobs or work/career options. Equally, individuals need to adapt to the changing work environment – no-one can be sure of a “job for life” anymore, no matter how much some of our political leaders would like to think otherwise.

If we look at the traditional function (not the same as purpose) of many companies, it was to harness certain resources in the pursuit of creating assets or wealth. So, companies were once really good at sourcing and managing financial capital, human capital, and intellectual capital. They were even “better” at this if they had monopolistic access to, or operated within, highly controlled and tightly regulated markets.

Now, of course, thanks to disruption and other forces, companies no longer have a monopoly on these resources, as many markets have become outsourced, open source, disintermediated or decentralised. Rather than being formed by shareholders and other stakeholders for long-term ventures, “companies” can just as easily be a collective of self-forming, self-governing and self-aware resources that combine for a specific objective, for as long or short a time as the objective or enterprise requires. And technologies like Blockchain, digital assets and smart contracts will determine how, and for what reason, and for how long such entities will exist, and the resources they will require.

Next week: More musings on ICOs and cryptocurrencies  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FinTech Exchange, Chicago

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Now in its fourth year, Barchart’s FinTech Exchange* event seems largely designed to address the specific needs of the Chicago trading community: technology and data vendors; brokers and intermediaries; and commodities, futures and derivatives markets – with an emerging thread of Blockchain and crypto.

In fact, the Keynote Speaker, Dr. Richard Sandor, spoke of Blockchain as being as significant as the invention of double-entry bookkeeping, the launch of stock markets, the introduction of electronic trading, and the creation of financial derivatives combined.

Other topics included: the evolution of global financial markets; the threat or potential of enterprise Blockchain and FinTech solutions; the role of cryptocurrency exchanges; understanding big data and data analytics; deploying AI and machine learning within FinTech; and the rapid expansion of API solutions as products and services in their own right (not just as a means of data delivery).

There was also a panel discussion with the winners of the previous day’s Startup Exchange pitch event.

On behalf of Brave New Coin, I ran a series of round-table discussions on the current state of cryptocurrencies, token sales and digital assets; and the prospect of so-called security tokens (a topic which is sure to feature in this blog in coming months).

Finally, the notion of “alt data” is gaining attention, and not just among hedge funds. In part a by-product of big data (how to make sense of all this data), alt data is set to become the high-octane fuel for generating yield (if data is the new oil).

* Declaration of interest: Barchart syndicates Brave New Coin news and technical analysis content

Next week: Corporate purpose, disruption and empathy