Hasta La Gadget!

Earlier this week, we heard rumors that Apple could be announcing a Smart Home initiative at WWDC 2014. It sounded like a pretty exciting idea, to think that Apple could be diving into connected objects, home automation, and whatnot. Well if you were hoping that we can start seeing deeper integration from Apple products, think again.

According to the folks at Gigaom, their sources have revealed that Apple’s Smart Home initiative might not be as deep as you might think. Instead, they claim that the program will actually be pretty simple and straightforward, and basically would see connected devices on the market be sold with “Made for iPhone” certification.

The MFi certification basically means that a third-party accessory/product has been created for Apple’s products in mind. We’ve seen this in third-party cables and even video game controllers. While there are home automation products available in the market now that work with iOS devices, this certification basically makes it official, and would also serve as a badge of reassurance of sorts.

Will Apple ever get into creating smart home products of their own? Well we guess we’ll never know, especially since they managed to let products like Nest by their very own Tony Fadell (former Apple executive) slip through their fingers, but what do you guys think? Does this sound pretty disappointing? Either way we guess we will learn more at WWDC next week, so check back with us then for the details.

Apple’s Smart Home Initiative Might Be Less Complex Than We Think

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Apple, Home, Rumors,

Heads up gamers, according to a recent report in the Guardian newspaper, it seems that they have noticed criminals who are selling Valve’s Steam user data on a Russian dark web forum. These Steam accounts are being sold for just $15 each, making them extremely cheap to purchase, especially for those who’d rather not pay money for an entire library’s collection of games.

Now before you panic, relax because it does not mean that Steam was hacked. Rather, these hackers who managed to get ahold of Steam account information might have gotten them from gamers themselves, and in some cases these gamers might not know that they are giving out their Steam accounts to hackers.

According to Alex Holden, chief information security officer at Hold Security, he notes that there are two types of Steam games who might have wittingly/unwittingly given their account information away. One of the types includes achievement hunters who want to collect every achievement in their games and on Steam. However instead of actually working towards it, they pay hackers to help them get those achievements, and in the process might have gotten hacked in the process.

The second group of people are those who frequent the Community Portal. Hackers have spoofed the Community Portal’s website, tricking gamers into thinking that the website they’re visiting is the real deal, only to enter their account information, which is then stolen from them. Valve has yet to respond to these allegations, but either way we guess it’s worth pointing out that you should be careful anyway.

Hackers Reportedly Selling Steam User Data On Russian Dark Web

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Gaming, Hack, steam, valve,

For most of us, perhaps, a quick look in the garage or the attic reveals a number of things that are probably no longer useful but that we just haven’t taken the time to get rid of. When we do get around to “cleaning house,” though, we invariably experience a “lift,” a feeling that we’re somehow “lighter,” “cleaner,” more efficient — if only because we’ve got more uncluttered space to work in.

We’d argue it’s the same for any business organization. Work practices, tools, policies and even processes that you developed to serve a specific purpose at a given point in time can become less relevant and effective as your business environment changes. Given enough change, they can actually stop adding value at all, while continuing to drain resources as people continue to “go through the motions” because “we’ve just always done it.”

Deciding on What to “Stop Doing”

Yet, although we readily accept the need to “start doing new things” to stay viable in a rapidly-changing business climate, we’re far less likely to take the time to ask “what should we stop doing to rid ourselves of non-value adding corporate ‘clutter’?”

If you’re skeptical, consider the “XYZ” report, an indispensable data-reporting tool when you introduced it some years ago, but which no one reads anymore, even though your staff continues dutifully and laboriously to churn it out every quarter. In our consulting experience, almost everyone’s got a story like this one.

If we’ve succeeded in convincing you of the value of “cleaning the corporate attic,” here’s an approach we’ve used successfully with our clients that you can use to help you “lighten up.”

RAMMPP: Getting the Work Out

RAMMPP, developed at GE during the Jack Welch era, is simple and effective. The acronym focuses attention on those mechanisms that are most prone to becoming non-value adding over time: “Reports, Approvals, Meetings, Measures, Policies and Procedures.”

Here’s how the process works:

1. Start by polling your company or group or department or division to identify possible non-value adding (NVA) items in the RAMMPP categories.
2. Once you’ve collected them, gather a representative team of stakeholders to vet these NVA “candidates.” We like to have teams classify the NVAs along a spectrum of “control.” For instance: “Team, Division, Corporate, Customer, Regulator.” Or, on a smaller scale, “Self, Department, Group, Company, External.”
3. Begin with the NVAs you have the most control over. No use, for example, trying to eliminate or simplify something that is rigidly mandated by government regulation.
4. Determine whether the NVAs under your control can/should be completely eliminated or, at least, simplified and streamlined in more efficient ways in view of today’s – not yesterday’s – environment.
5. Create recommendations for eliminating or simplifying the NVAs you’ve targeted, and build a business case to support your recommendations.
6. Present your recommendations to a group of the appropriate decision makers in your company whose approval of what you’re recommending will be binding for all.
7. Set up a well-publicized accountability structure or timetable to monitor the implementation of your approved recommendations.

Croissants, Anyone?

If you haven’t “cleaned the attic” in a while, you could be amazed at what you find. We recently worked for a newly-appointed European division head for a major pharmaceuticals company who was astonished — not to mention frustrated — to find that he was actually expected to spend time reviewing and signing purchase requests for luncheon croissants. Needless to say, this was a proverbial “no-brainer,” and this approval process was completely eliminated.

Another of our clients generously established a facility dry-cleaning program whose admirable goal was to save hard-working employees time by allowing them to submit and retrieve their dry-cleaning conveniently in their own facility lobby. In conducting the RAMMPP process, however, we learned that administering the program took valuable time from the facility receptionist and security personnel, while, for whatever reason, it was being used by only two per-cent of employees in the facility. Another easy call.

Clutter Adds Up

Clearly, neither of the examples above, by itself, represents significant time savings. However, when large numbers of NVAs are aggregated, we have seen clients free up a surprising amount of organizational “bandwidth.” And this freed-up capacity, detached from what no longer has value and re-applied to important, even vital current priorities, can immediately give your business an added boost without the need for any additional resources.

In a recent project of ours, a RAMMPP team of about twenty people over two days, identified 74.3 person-weeks worth of non-value-added activity to be eliminated or simplified. Even more importantly, this team actually realized the estimated 74.3 weeks in only 120 days!

Doing More with What You’ve Already Got

It’s probably understandable that when we think of “being better” and “doing more,” our thoughts go first to needing and getting more resources, more capacity — a bigger budget, more staff. But from our experience, there’s almost always the opportunity, first, to better optimize existing resources by routinely ridding your company’s “garage” or “attic” of what mattered yesterday, so you can re-focus those resources onto what matters today. Think of it as doing more with what you’ve already got — to the great benefit of your company’s bottom line!

Ray Gagnon is principal and Founder of Gagnon Associates, a management consulting firm with a long-standing practice in GE Work-Out, located in Metro-West Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Colleges across America have been in the news recently, for rather unsettling reasons.

Commencement speakers from Rutgers and Brandeis to Haverford and the University of California, Berkeley — and one proposed recipient of an honorary degree — have either backed out or been disinvited based on past statements or controversial positions they’ve taken. This emerging trend curbs, rather than expands, the free flow of ideas and speech, pillars upon which this country and our colleges and universities are built.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cancelled her commencement speech at Rutgers University following student protests about her role in the Iraq war during the Bush Administration. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the head of the International Monetary Fund, backed out as commencement speaker at the University of California, Berkeley, after faculty and students protested her invitation, calling the IMF “corrupt” and accusing it of oppressing women.

It hasn’t stopped there. Robert Birgeneau, the former Chancellor of UC Berkeley and an established advocate for undocumented students, backed out of an appearance at Haverford College near Philadelphia after students protested the way university police handled demonstrators during the Occupy movement. Finally, Brandeis University, its motto “Truth, Even Unto Its Innermost Parts,” withdrew its invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Muslim women’s advocate who is critical of Islam.

For purposes of this conversation, let’s put aside the fact that there are differences between inviting someone to deliver a commencement address and bestowing an honorary degree. Considering the careful process that goes into selecting speakers and honorees, for colleges to succumb to such pressure contravenes the notion that institutions of higher learning should be bastions of autonomous discourse and the free exchange of ideas.

At Touro College and at most other colleges and universities across the country, individual schools submit names of potential honorees to central committees, which then decide whether to extend the invitations.

The process is not always easy, but it should involve criteria that ensures the invited guests are individuals who respect — though not necessarily agree with — all aspects of the political process, and who embrace generally accepted legal and moral principles. No matter one’s political leanings, most would agree that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or Speaker of the House John Boehner would be acceptable, while Syrian President Bashar as-Assad or a member of Boko Haram, the Nigerian group that has kidnapped hundreds of girls and women, would not.

Granted, that leaves a sizable middle ground. It’s never black and white and each institution must determine for itself the path closest aligned with its mission. However, once the criteria are met and a decision is reached at the highest levels of the organization, the college should extend its invitation and stand by it, barring a revelation of some previously unknown egregious information or abhorrent behavior.

Of course students and faculty have the right to object and to make their voices heard, both after invitations are sent and — in an orderly fashion at graduation. But rather than cave in to the pressure, college administrators should stand by their selections and dissuade honorees from withdrawing in short-sighted attempts to temper the controversies.

Our country was founded upon dissent and freedom of speech. During his campaign for President in 1800, Thomas Jefferson endured savage verbal attacks from his political opponents. According to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, one newspaper wrote that a Jefferson victory would mean “Murder, robbery, rape, adultery, and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes.” Despite a level of discourse that would be unthinkable today, Jefferson stood his ground and both he, and the republic, survived.

Institutions of higher learning must teach by example that to adhere to our lofty ideals, we must learn to listen, even if we do not agree.

Yesterday, I participated in a great mini-conference held by Harvard’s Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston on how technology innovation could help increase social mobility. (In full disclosure, I sit on the Institute’s advisory board.) Throughout, we heard a range of ideas and examples about how technology can drive changes in civic engagement, government responsiveness and education. We also heard about tech and jobs.

The most interesting content to me, though, came in what we heard on the margins. Technology innovation can help improve social mobility. For that to happen, however, we have to invest like we want it to.

First, to give some context. “Social mobility” generally refers to someone’s ability to move up and down income, asset and/or opportunity ladders over time. Since most people prefer not to move down those ladders, social mobility has become, in general parlance, loosely synonymous with upward mobility. As for “technology innovation,” the two terms combined seem to focus people on the internet, high-tech, computing, social media and mobile technologies.

When groups of people get together for half a day to talk about improving social mobility, the focus is, not surprisingly, on those with relative social immobility now. In Boston, for example, that means low-income residents of color in a set of zip codes that experience chronic poverty, vulnerability and crime, along with struggling schools, battered infrastructure and a history of political marginalization. Most major American cities have just such a set of zip codes.

According to the Equality of Opportunity Project, Boston ranks 7th on the nation’s mobility ladder for low-income families. The top ten include several other large cities, such as San Francisco, Washington and New York, as well as a few seemingly unlikely candidates, including Salt Lake City and Newark. In all of the top ranked cities, however, your chances of making the top 20 percent if you start in the bottom are somewhere around 11 percent, give or take. If you are born in a poor neighborhood, poverty can get even “stickier,” especially if you are a person of color.

With that context in place, conference speakers told us technology innovation holds promise for increasing social mobility. Much of this promise revolves around employment. Whether you call it the “knowledge economy,” the “innovation economy” or the “technology economy,” for example, giving people computing, internet and mobile technology skills improves job prospects. When cities invest in fostering start-ups, including the hot field of technology start-ups, they increase the chances of creating new jobs for their residents. Further, a number of cities around the country are investing in mobile technologies that improve civic engagement and enfranchisement, especially for low-income families. Living Cities, for example, helps invest the resources of 22 foundations in just such initiatives.

We heard all of this at the conference. On the very last panel, however, when given the opportunity to reflect openly, we heard a few other things, too. Nigel Jacob, head of Boston’s Office of New Urban Mechanics — one of the more innovative civic technology organizations in the country — pointed out that we tend to apply technology innovation to the easier problems because the harder ones are, well, hard. People living in bottom-quintile neighborhoods mostly live in those hard places.

Chris Jones, Executive Director of DSNI, recipient of one of the Obama administration’s Promise Neighborhood investments, said right off the bat, “Race and class matter.” Then he repeated it. Mobil technology penetration is arguably higher among teens of color than white teens. But, as UT Austin researcher S. Craig Watkins notes, “… access to technology does not mean access to the same forms of capital and opportunities to leverage technology in particular kinds of ways including, for example, civic engagement and economic or educational opportunity.”

At the very end of the day, Jacob and economist Ed Glaeser, author of Triumph of the City, noted that capital tends to follow technology innovations with easily defined and tracked market-based solutions, start-up investments are geared toward the type and pace of scaling that for-profit companies do, rather than nonprofit or governmental entities, and regulatory environments can make innovation difficult in the best of circumstances, let alone for those with limited access to capital, social networks and political power. We also heard one speaker remind us that, while technology can support education in radical new ways, kids also need environments that send them to school ready to focus on using such technology to learn.

These “riffs” on the day’s lessons made me realize, too, that no one there had focused particularly on the prospects of non-internet based technologies for improving social mobility. For example, how could 3-D printers or innovations such as MIT’s sewable computer parts create new small-scale manufacturing centers in urban neighborhoods? How could urban farming technologies eliminate food deserts while creating income opportunities for low-income urban residents? Work is happening in all these spaces, but focus and investment remain at least marginal when compared with the affair capital seems to have with “high” tech innovations and their relatively enfranchised entrepreneurs.

The obvious take-aways from this conference on innovation and mobility, then, were that people need access to technology and related skills for social mobility. Further, today’s technology innovations offer whole new ways for children to learn, citizens to participate and leaders to respond responsibly and effectively to local needs. Lastly, the new businesses that technology can foster create job opportunities and new incomes for those who work in them.

Less obvious, but just as important to me, however, were the messages about what kinds of technology innovations get mind share, who and what get capital investment and how easy or hard it is for those already marginalized to access, learn and use technology to their advantage.

Technology innovation can help drive social mobility. But that doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Real choices about resources, regulations, access — and even what we define as innovative — help or hinder. We have to drive innovation towards driving mobility.