The TikTok Moment – lessons learned from the modern day Sputnik Moment of #DigitalTransformation

This is a Guest blog post from Jet Lu, digital innovator and digital transformation leader who is Director of Digital DevOps for the City of Baltimore.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was perceived as a technological gap between the United States and Soviet Union, and caused public fear and anxiety. Days later, president Dwight Eisenhower addressed the nation with a subdued message: “So far as the satellite itself is concerned, that does not raise my apprehension-not one iota,”. However, it wasn’t long before Eisenhower declared the true crisis and threats the United States must confront. The true crisis and propaganda coup as the result of Sputnik was not truly suppressed until 10 years after, when we put the first and only humans on the surface of the moon. That is still standing true until this very day.

We got over the crisis and took lead in the competition by accepting the competing factors, and excelling ourselves to be the best at it. We have to give the same sense of urgency and priority to digital transformation.

In August 2020, executive orders were issued aimed to ban social media platforms TikTok and WeChat. These may not be familiar names to many prior to the political hype, but it does not change the fact that they have 500 million and 1 billion active users respectively. There’s a global competition over artificial intelligence, cyber security, digital connectivity, and digital influence. Unfortunately, we do not have a solid lead in the race anymore, and some analyst may say we are losing the lead position. If you haven’t come to the realization this is at the same scale, if not greater, than the historic Sputnik crisis, then you have positioned yourself behind the eight ball. 

We have hit a ‘TikTok moment’, and I want to coin this phrase. I want our children to remember this moment and what it means in history. Why? Because once again, we are in reactive and defensive mode. It is the crossroads of a modern day revolution, a digital revolution. We should use this as fuel for digital transformation to truly come out ahead of the race from this ‘TikTok’ crisis.

We have long been in the state of a developed country. However, have we achieved being the first digitally developed country? The digital equity issues across the States screams “digital crisis.” The digital world is borderless, and it invites your competitors to your front steps. It can be a healthy competition though, or even a healthy collaboration if handled right. It is not all necessarily negative. We must take the right steps as we confront the challenges and threats it presents, and take aggressive and transformative steps forward. I’m not a politician. I’m a transformation leader, and in today’s world, the focus is digital transformation. Banning TikTok or WeChat is an attempt to avoid the risk, but there are more effective steps we should take in order to mitigate the risks & threats in a more transformative way.

Lesson #1: Honor the duct tape solutions, and take them seriously

Digital innovation has been disruptive for quite some time, from the dotcom era (from 1995 to the dotcom bubble burst in 2000), to physical to cyber, and now cyber to physical. Much of how we are adapting to the digital solutions are seen as duct tape approaches, such as injecting social media usage to existing sales & marketing outreach, as well as employee engagement.

Two reasons to take these duct tape approaches seriously: First, businesses use the new digital capabilities creatively. The business value we could extract from a particular technology is only limited by the appetite of an organization to try new things, and take on calculated risks. Just as there’s not only one right use for duct tape. Second, it is a misconception that these digital duct tape solutions are temporary. As technology disrupts the status quo, we can expect to strategize using these digital equivalents of duct tape as a long term approach. We should come to the realization that how we used to run our businesses is becoming the band-aid we should rip off quickly to minimize the pain.

The China-based messaging app, WeChat, served as the most popular duct tape solution testbed for personal and business use in China. Just as Mark Zuckerberg once said that “private messaging, ephemeral stories, and small groups are by far the fastest growing areas of online communication”, and messaging is at the core of Facebook’s future. WeChat is taking a similar approach. Today, WeChat is the go-to app for personal messaging, group messaging, information sharing, ride hailing, making payments, receive payments, and digital wallet. These are just a few of the digital duct tape equivalents that have proved their effectiveness.

Lesson #2: Don’t be afraid to challenge established ecosystems

This is exactly how technology such as TikTok, WeChat, and many others are disrupting the digital maturity we proudly exhibit. For example, our banking industry is an established ecosystem with very mature endpoint capabilities. Businesses are able to equip themselves to accept different means of payment, and Point of Sale (POS) support is very common. In many parts of the world, affordability to join this ecosystem continued to be a major challenge. Square disrupted this space by lowering the cost of entry and improving the end user experience. Furthermore, platforms like WeChat and Alipay disrupted the space again by providing a contactless and zero-cost endpoint support alternative, the pay by QR code option. This is by far the most impactful digital duct tape equivalent in 3rd world and developing countries. Today, WeChat and Alipay QR code payment is the default method of payment for over 1 billion users globally. This digital duct tape has earned a permanent seat at the high table.

Lesson #3: Digital Transformation has a leading role in responding to today’s business challenges

One thing we have to be very clear about is that digital transformation equals business transformation in the current landscape. What digital transformation is NOT, is to simply make changes on how your IT supports your business. Technology is an enabler, but how you apply and mobilize it to transform your business is the key. Because it takes enterprise level leadership to take the charge in shifting the culture, transform operating processes, bridge knowledge gaps, and repurpose resources. There are deliberate implications to all areas of an organization, such as procurement, legal, product development, sales & marketing, business administration, manufacturing, and etc. 

The low hanging fruits of digitization in a mature business environment are digital workers, digital influence, and turning data into action. 

Digital Workers

The concept of digital workers, via Robotic Process Automation, is a widely adopted and practical way to apply to operational challenges that are time consuming and repetitive. Robotic Process Automation solutions are not meant to replace human workers, but to enable workers to do more while eliminating human errors. The human worker still owns the business intelligence to support the delivery of the business value. Robotic Process Automation is perfect for business processes that contain tedious tasks such as data processing, user notification, task hand-off, document routing, calculations, calling APIs and etc.

Digital Influence

In today’s world, influencers do not have to spread their ideas in person. With the help of digital technology, mass outreach is immediate, targeted, and traced. Most importantly, audience feedback works the same way. This is being used heavily today, not only in businesses’ sales & marketing campaigns, but also political campaigns. 

The effectiveness is beyond the traditional media. Today’s technology enables influencer campaigners to predict personality traits, consumption habits, as well as political orientation of their target audiences. Then through a series of effort to put information in front of their audience, while the messages may be directly or indirectly related to the objective, to shape or shift the audiences’ decisions. The decisions are often perceived as your own without even realizing the influencing factors. A study of the infamous case of how Cambridge Analytica turned data from Facebook that was publicly available into political campaign tools, makes me ponder just how powerful and destructive it can be for data to be in the wrong hands. Especially for those who have possession of your private data.

While that may be a bit extreme, but a simple digital outreach to get information to your audience, and automate the feedback loop from your audience, is definitely a low hanging fruit.

Turning data into action

Many organizations today are looking for innovative ideas with different motives. Some are trying to align solutions to their digital transformation strategy, some are for making the headlines, and some are trying to improve existing Key Performance Indicators (KPI). However, a common misconception is that it has to be a new product or solution. There are so many existing products and solutions that were put in place and never executed to its full potential. In most cases, leveraging data from existing solutions is a low hanging fruit to upgrade these solutions to realize additional business value.

In a panel discussion earlier this year, I talked about exactly how this applies to the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions, and how we can turn existing Operational Technology (OT) into IoT solutions by the convergence of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT). If we look at all IoT solutions in stages of maturity, I would have to agree with John Rossman. The four levels of IoT are

• Level 1: tracking capabilities – this is where a single device collects data, but the value it provides is limited, and it is only available to the owner of the data.
• Level 2: insights and adjustments – this level of IoT devices comes with sensor based analytics, and data is captured in the cloud. There may also be simple analytics and machine learning algorithms applied to the data. However, there’s no real-time adjustment, and there’s no network value where it connects & interacts with other devices.
• Level 3: optimizations – this is where a network of devices are in play, and based on the data generated, they are making real-time and automated adjustments.
• Level 4: network coordination – this is the ultimate goal and the most powerful state of IoT solutions. At this level, insights and actions are improved with not just one type of devices in the network, but variety of devices. In addition, the network is capable of handling entry and exit of devices to the network.

Many IoT solutions that were put in place by businesses and local government are of Level 1. As a matter of fact, many legacy operational technology solutions that are in use today can be considered as Level 1 IoT solutions. What they all have in common is the opportunity to level up to Level 2 or Level 3 by simply putting the data to work.

Lesson #4: Regulatory effort needs a sense of urgency

Digital transformation is not just about tech solutions, it should be include the full package of solutioning and operationalizing the solution with the support of necessary laws, regulations, and policies.

Today, mobile devices are tethered to users worldwide running a variety of applications, and they are generating an immense amount of data. The number of devices and data streaming agents per capita is growing by the day. The challenge is no longer who can obtain the data, but how we regulate a level playing field to embrace it, exploit the opportunities, control the risks, and stay ahead of it. When mobile phones were first widely adopted, getting information from an individual isn’t a secret weapon anymore. This also means minimal cost of entry to leverage real-time point-to-point communication. Such technology was once only accessible and affordable by businesses and military use. Technological advancement caused a shift in the society and put the power in the hands of individuals. To that extent, smart mobile devices ignited disruption in many areas. Some were not so obvious at the time, such as ride hailing services. There are risks and threats from every piece of technology, but there are also opportunities. Risk and threat mitigation is not as simple as disallowing the use of new tech. We are still dealing with phone scammers today, but we have legal and regulatory support. Most importantly, we have innovated beyond that and gained new grounds and new competitive advantages.

Conclusion

The overarching lesson to be learned is that we must get serious about digital transformation. We have to do it now, and we have to do it right. The impact on our economy and our quality of life will be substantial, and the impact is in all industries.

A stroll through Chinatown anywhere in the world will give you a taste of the Chinese culture. A few good ones will even make you feel like you are visiting China. Authentic food, sounds of the native tongue, and structures and signs resembles the culture to a tee. But it does not stop there. Paying for food and services just as they do in China is widely adopted as well. That’s right, it’s part of the culture to have a QR code in front of every cash register of every business. Customers open their WeChat app and scan the QR code to transfer funds from their WeChat wallet to the vendor’s WeChat wallet. The Chinese Yuan moved from one account to another in China, and never set foot in a foreign market, with zero recorded impact on the GDP of where the products and services were provided – and zero taxes collected!

That’s just one example of a problem created by not being in the front of digital innovation. With enough of these kinds of problems, we will find ourselves in a crisis. However, looking at it from a different angle, these are good problems to have. It means that someone is trying to do something right, a ripple effect is created. There are opportunities in every crisis. We should not panic, but instead exploit the heck out of those opportunities so that we can come out ahead of the TikTok crisis.

Jet Lu is a digital innovator, speaker and digital transformation leader. He is Director of Digital DevOps for the City of Baltimore and can be reached at jet.lu@outlook.com.

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Musings about Work, Equality, Social Justice and Capitalism: Human Capitalism

This is a Guest blog post from Jeff Cherry, Founder and Managing Partner of The Conscious Venture Fund and Founding Partner of The Laudato Si Startup Challenge. He is a tech CEO and mentor, investor, philanthropist, and community builder.

 

What comes next?

I recently listened to a thought-provoking episode of the TED Radio Hour on NPR entitled What We Value. Its premise was that this economic and societal crisis in which we find ourselves is accelerating the move towards a new set of values when it comes to the practice of capitalism. Those of us in the social impact and Conscious Capitalism space are heartened to see this discussion gaining momentum, but the question remains: How will capitalism change now that the unhealthy state of business and our major societal institutions have been laid bare?

There are many indications that this shift was in the offing far before the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Although late to the game, the statement released by the Business Roundtable in August 2019 signaled a transformative move away from the outdated notion of shareholder primacy and towards a more human and effective form of business. It certainly garnered the attention of the press. And others in the business mainstream who had been either unaware or hostile to the market forces driving this change, are now finding it hard to ignore discussions of stakeholder management and whether business should have a broader role in society.

These ever-expanding discussions about the purpose of business in society are now taking place in the context of what does a return to “normal” look like in the economy. And a growing sentiment that the normal we were experiencing — where greed, inequity, declining living standards, crony capitalism, rent-seeking, regulatory capture, share buy-backs, corporate welfare and environmental depletion were the norm — isn’t in fact normal. Nor a state of being for which we should collectively yearn. As you might imagine, I agree.

The challenge we face now then, is how do we actually execute on this new idea? Many people talk about business for good and changing the purpose of the firm. But in the real world of competitive advantage, pricing models, customer needs, shareholder demands, supplier, employee and community relationships, knowing what to do is hard. We speak to entrepreneurs all the time who are philosophically aligned with a new narrative about business. They can cite anecdotes about others who have been successful, and they lack a cognitive frame that they can use to build an organization that embodies this day-in and day-out.

I’ve written at length about why I believe a focus on stakeholders in business and capitalism needs to replace the old story. In this article, the first of a two-part series, I’ll describe a framework to begin the journey to business as an institute of societal well-being: Or Human Capitalism.

Photo by Koushik Chowdavarapu on Unsplash

The New Narrative of Business in Society: Human Capitalism
What does a new story about the practice of business and capitalism look like in practical terms?

In order to fully bring this new narrative to life, I believe we need to re-define the purpose of business as a societal institution. Then, we need to translate that definition into tools that real entrepreneurs and executives can use every day to guide how they formulate strategy, individual decision making and implementation.

When a new cohort of the Conscious Venture Lab convenes, I ask a question to frame the work we’ll be doing over the ensuing 16-weeks: “What kind of world could we create if investors, executives and entrepreneurs cared as much about people as they care about profit?” It isn’t a question I expect any of the teams to answer outright. It’s a rhetorical challenge to think about how these ideas impact their businesses and the broader society.

Over the last few months, I’ve reframed that question: What kind of world could we create if we decided our first duty in business was to simply care for each other? This is the essence of Human Capitalism.

This version of the question doesn’t pit people against profit, which I believe is a false construct. Instead, it captures the meaning we’re all experiencing in this moment: can we be a complete society if the overarching purpose of business is only to increase profits and not primarily to improve the human condition? Both of these questions are variations of the age-old investigation of “What is a business for?” Academics, economists, politicians, social scientists and businesspeople have been asking this question for decades, if not longer.

Liesel Pritzker Simmons, co-founder of the impact investing firm Bluehaven Initiative, has said, “A crisis gives us an excuse to have conviction earlier.” What we are experiencing in this moment has emphasized how interconnected we are as a society and as a world. It has emphasized the importance of health as a public imperative. The importance of economic, community and personal resiliency as interdependent societal imperatives to which individuals and all societal institutions, even businesses, need to contribute. This crisis is bringing along those who may not have reached a level of conviction to move to a more human form of capitalism had things stayed … normal.

In this new reality it’s clear that the question about what type of world we want to create can no longer remain abstract or rhetorical. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the truth, that a focus on our interdependent well-being is necessary for society’s survival. Succeed together or fail together the choice is ours, but we can no longer hide behind a narrative that separates individual financial self-interest from our mutual survival.

In the post-COVID world, the new narrative of business in society is a narrative about authentic caring, societal resilience and collective well-being.

Practical Ways to Integrate Human Capitalism
Herb Kelleher, the legendary founder of Southwest Airlines, once said, “The business of business is people — yesterday, today and forever….” But what does it actually mean to structure your business around people? What can you do tomorrow to transform the structure of your business, respond to this new reality and become the type of leader that society needs?

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Caring is Job 1:
Above all there is one thing leaders must do first in order to be successful in this new world: They must actually care! To be clear, leaders who embrace the idea of caring for stakeholders as a core value and primary motivation for running a business will be well-positioned to succeed in this new world. They’ll be more able to execute on the ideas described later in this article and more likely to attract talent, customers and investors in a post-COVID world of business as a vital instrument of society.

At first this seems obvious and perhaps, some would say, no different than the status quo. But the nuance of authentically treating employees, suppliers, customers and communities as individuals deserving of your care for their own sake, as opposed to primarily as fodder for creating returns is critically important. Not only to how your company will be perceived, but authentic caring — or the lack thereof — will have a tremendous impact on your competitive performance. People understand instinctively if you are treating them fairly simply as a form of manipulation for other ends. And, unless you’ve created a true culture of caring in your organization, you’ll be tempted to abandon that care when it comes into conflict with your “real goals.” The best leaders however will understand this simple truth: how we think about creating financial value is now, more than ever, clearly tied to the way we create societal value. Authentically caring is a key component of this new narrative.

“What wins in the marketplace is that you are responsible for taking care of everyone who encounters your organization” Tom Gardner: CEO and Co-Founder, The Motley Fool

With that as our foundation, there are two things that every leader can do to build caring into the operational DNA of their business:

First, adopt a specific set of guiding principals about what it means to care for each other in service of societal well-being. And second,

Institute a practical business operating system that provides a framework for living into those guiding principals.

Here in Part-1, I’ll discuss a set of guiding principles we’ve created at the Conscious Venture Lab to help entrepreneurs execute upon these cultures of caring.

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Guiding Principles: The Five Promises of Collective Well-Being
In order to seed this new culture of caring into the DNA of your operations, it is crucially important that you articulate and codify a set of guiding principles that the entire company can use to organize your thought processes and create operating norms, policies, procedures and metrics that will keep your culture on track in good times and in challenging times…like during a pandemic.

Companies that will lead us into a more effective model of capitalism and a future of broadly-shared prosperity have structured their business to deliver on what I call The Five Promises of Collective Well-Being, through which we vow to use business to make the world:

• More just,
• More joyous,
• More equitable,
• More sustainable and
• More prosperous for all.

Let’s examine each principle:

Business as a path to a More Just society:
Leaders who are best at this will work to create social justice by structuring their organizations to level the playing field and authentically create access to opportunity for all those in their ecosystem who want to contribute.

Conscious Venture Lab and SHIFT Ventures portfolio companies Hungry Harvest and R3 Score have built this promise into their business models, which drives impact and returns.

Hungry Harvest creates a more just world by providing fresh food to communities that wouldn’t otherwise have access to it and dignified work opportunities to people in need. As a result, they create scores of “Harvest Heroes” who loyally buy wholesome food from the company that otherwise would have gone to waste. In the process they have increase sales by more than 34,000% over the last 4 years.

R3Score creates a more just world by providing a dignified return to civil society for millions of formerly incarcerated Americans and allowing banks a way to engage with people they would otherwise ignore. Thereby expanding the banks’ customer base, putting financial assets to work that would otherwise lay fallow and giving the 1-in-3 Americans with a criminal record the opportunity to build a new life.

Business as a path to a More Joyous life:
Leaders who bring more joy into the world will do so by focusing on a combination of the quality of the human interactions in their operations, eliminating misery as a core aspect of their business and/or creating products that bring authentic joy to more lives.

One of my personal favorite companies, Union Square Hospitality Group, uses a culture of caring and enlightened hospitality to bring joy to employees, customers and suppliers alike.

Startup Aqus Water, that was a part of the Vatican Laudato Si Challenge in 2017, has created a product that puts “three years of clean water in the palm of (the) hand(s)” of people in places where lack of clean water has been causing extreme hardship for centuries. With more than 780 MM people in the world lacking access to clean water, bringing joy will undoubtedly bring prosperity to many.

Business as a path to More Equitable communities:
When leaders focus on creating a mutual exchange of value between all stakeholders, they move their organizations away from the negative consequences of shareholder primacy and create more equitable communities for everyone. Paradoxically, an equitable approach to business, or removing the shareholder blinders, often creates new paths to greater value for shareholders.

Greyston Bakery in Yonkers New York is a pioneer of open hiring. They create a more equitable world by focusing not on the tyranny of weeding people out in the hiring process but by providing the dignity of work to anyone who wants it.

Here in Baltimore, Jacob Hsu and his company Catalyte have created an entirely new way of identifying undervalued individuals who have the aptitude to become exceptional engineers. Creating new paths to equity and unleashing massive financial potential for communities, his clients and the company.

Business as a path to a More Sustainable world:
The winning leaders of the new narrative think and plan for the long-term. They understand that sustainability in every sense is the key to enduring organizational health. They establish a circle of growth for the planet, the people who serve or are served by the organization and the organization itself.

Billion-dollar clothing company Patagonia has rejected the world of “fast fashion” by creating high quality, long-lasting products and offering a repair and reuse program to discourage customers from buying things they don’t need.

Orsted, a $9BB energy company based in Denmark was named the Most Sustainable Company in the World by Corporate Knights in 2020. The company has transformed itself from a fossil fuel company to a total green energy juggernaut, significantly outperforming its peers, the European stock indices and returning over 42% ROI over the last 12 months.

Business as a path to a More Prosperous existence for us all:
The best leaders view value creation with a polarity, or both/and mindset. They actively look to create real wealth for employees, customers, communities, suppliers and shareholders. They work to manage the polarity of creating value for all stakeholders by asking themselves questions like: “How do we simultaneously achieve the upside of paying our employees as much as possible, and, the upside of creating great returns for shareholders?” This is in contrast to shareholder value leaders who see all stakeholder relationships as tradeoffs that need to be solved for the benefit of shareholders.

Starbucks has fed more than 10 million people through its FoodShare program, redoubled its commitment to eliminate gender pay equity gaps, and committed to becoming “… resource positive — storing more carbon than we emit, eliminating waste and providing more clean fresh water than we use …” — all while rewarding shareholders handsomely — even during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Why Human CAPITALISM?
In Part-2 of this series I will discuss how the tenets of Conscious Capitalism and stakeholder management will allow organizations to clear the clutter and build these principles into everyday operations.

For now, a note before we end to my main audience: The Skeptics:

I spend the majority of every waking hour thinking about how to support entrepreneurs who have previously been neglected and who are creating world changing companies despite the immense hurdles they face. I also spend a majority of that time thinking about how to invest on behalf of my limited partners in a way that will create exceptional returns. I am a capitalist who believes capitalism can and should be practiced in a way that unleashes its power to elevate all humanity. That we can create a more humane form of commerce and human cooperation. What I am suggesting is that capitalism, like any man-made system, must evolve as society evolves. To paraphrase my friend and mentor Ed Freeman, professor at the Darden School at The University of Virginia, the alternative to capitalism as we know it today is not socialism, but a better, more human form of capitalism.

For those who would push back on these ideas as leaving shareholders behind and giving away profits I would simply ask you to suspend disbelief for a bit. Take a few minutes to think not about what you might lose, but about what you might gain. What kind of world could we create if we decided our first duty in business was to care for each other? Look around…I think that time has come.

 

Jeff Cherry, is CEO and Managing Partner of SHIFT Ventures, and Founder & Executive Director of Conscious Venture Lab, an award-winning and internationally recognized early stage accelerator. He is also Founder and Managing Partner of The Conscious Venture Fund and Founding Partner of The Laudato Si Startup Challenge. Jeff is a pioneer in conscious capitalism and double bottom-line investing. He can be reached at jcherry@consciousventurelab.com.

The Success Formula: Success = BD+GM+F+C+P

Almost 9 years ago, I published this, my first Blog post on WINNING IDEAS. As I work with students, mentees, and other business colleagues of late, I find myself reverting to various “Fundamentals” in our conversations, this one perhaps being the most important of all.  Please enjoy and let me know what you think!

What does it take to be Successful? Everyone has an opinion on this for sure.

Success is Winning, and everyone loves Winning.

Having been a student and analyst of the subject of Success for over 40 years, I think I have boiled down the formula of what creates Success:

SUCCESS = BURNING DESIRE + GOAL MANAGEMENT + FOCUS + COURAGE + PERSISTENCE

Each of the great thinkers and each successful person has their own personal take on what it takes to achieve success, but these are the 5 essential elements.

 

Of course, I left out a couple of other important elements like Serendipity, Luck, Sacrifice, Hard Work, and others, but I believe that these “sub elements” are a part of one of these 5 essential ingredients.  For example, if you have a Burning Desire (passion), then you will make the sacrifices and work hard.  Goal Setting includes goal review, and is the roadmap to the destination.

Courage is an interesting one and we don’t hear it mentioned often, but to me, Courage is all about taking action, and stepping up and going outside your comfort zone to make things happen.  Without Courage, thought cannot easily be transformed into Action.

And what about luck?  Well, the more persistent you are, the luckier you get.  By never giving up and hanging in there, opportunities will inevitably come your way.

Persistence is my favorite, and I conclude this, my first ever Blog Post with my favorite quote:

“Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”   – Winston Churchill