Industries That Are Shaping The World We Live In

/in /by

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective Article |Industry Influence|Industries That Are Shaping The World We Live InTo some degree, every single industry is shaping the world we live in. After all, without even the smallest business, the world would be a slightly different place. However, this can be a pedantic way of looking at things. It’s quite clear that there are many industries that hold much more sway over our lives than others, and as someone hoping to start out and follow a career of importance, it can be worthwhile to know what these industries are, and what they are contributing specifically.

The upcoming decade, starting with the year 2020, is sure to be an interesting time. Never before has mankind been so connected with information, had so much terror but also love and achievement, to have so many countries following so many disparate policies, to have so many inventions run our lives and help us in ways we couldn’t imagine. Your life today is thoroughly different from the life of someone living only two or three generations ago.

For that reason, we need more intelligent, caring, ethical and responsible people in positions of power and influence than ever. If you feel yourself to be one of those people, or you hope you could be, consider the following career paths:

Silicon Valley & Big Tech

Silicon valley and big tech are influencing our lives in more ways than one. Apps such as Uber have revolutionized the means in which we consider travelling throughout our local environment, while entire careers and messages have been sustained through Apps such as Instagram and Twitter. In fact, these industries have been facing increasing calls for further regulation, suggesting that their power is being noticed more and more. Deplatforming certain ideas can lead to a very one-sided debate, while our digital presences often take precedence before our actual in-person appearance. This can be important to consider.

The Medical Industry

The medical industry is continually shaping the world in extreme ways, but not only that, recruitment for said industry has never been more open and possible. This is where you may feel a potential opening up for yourself. For example, if you browse available pathology jobs, you can see just how these vital skills are needed more than ever, and how the continual fight against diseases.

Not only that, but the future of the medical industry looks bright, as never before have amputees had such access to restoring limb functionality using prosthetics that function through neural connection to a limited degree. It’s hard to measure exactly, but over the next ten years we can expect seismic shifts in the medical field to begin, and this is exciting news.

Automotive

Vehicles have already shaped the world we live in. The structure of cities and residential districts have been completely changed thanks to vehicles, and of course, environmental impact has been hard to quantify. That being said, it’s important to note just how much potential there is out there, and what the common new trends of the industry are. For example, self-driving cars are just around the corner pending further testing. Hybrid cars are the norm, and electric cars are becoming more and more commonplace, with almost all vehicle manufacturers at least dabbling in the tech, as they know the future will be defined by it.

Not only that, but a wave of new awareness regarding diesel vehicles, driving within city centres and additional regulations that are being set up to mitigate this can suggest that governments are becoming increasingly aware of manufacturing development, and this is important. There are exciting shifts happening in this space, and they will come to define how we interact with travel into the far future.

Charitable Ventures

Charitable ventures are not only becoming more competent at spreading awareness for certain issues, but charitable measures are slowly starting to erode that lumbering mass of prior ineffectiveness that we may have become accustomed to.

Now, awareness, good intentions, the stories of individuals and groups and the spread of international understanding can happen in a moment’s notice. Most charities are able to bring their work into the fullest picture, potentially offering a more comprehensive set of beliefs to those who were yet unaware of a particular problem.

For example, charities helping to mitigate some of the damage caused to the Hong Kong people at the moment have begun to surface, allowing for those in the international community to extend their support without a lumbering charitable organization to work through. If that isn’t a sign of progress, it’s hard to know what is.

With this advice, you are certain to appreciate and learn more about the industries that shape the world we live in.

How 25 Years of the Internet Has Changed the World of Business

/in /by

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective Article | How 25 Years of the Internet Has Changed the World of BusinessMany things have changed in the world of business over the past 25 years; in fact, some would say that almost everything to do with business and the associated transactions has changed or been altered in a significant way with the advent of the internet, online purchasing, smartphones, and Wi-Fi. While it may be true that how business is conducted has been altered significantly, it is also true that who consumers are doing business with is sometimes a complete mystery, even to the consumer. Yes, the world of business has changed a great deal in the past 25 years and here are just some of the many ways you may have noticed it altering the way you do business.

Online Information

It may be difficult to comprehend, but there are 55 to 60 billion pages of web information that has been created by people using the internet, and that figure grows exponentially each year. In addition to that number of web search engine indexed pages of data, there are an estimated hundreds of billions of pages of information that are not indexed – including almost 700 million tweet posts each day. Add to that all the emails, government records, and constantly changing pages of products for sale, and you can see how massive the world of online information has become. As little as 25 years ago, that much information available to anyone that wanted to spend time locating it was unthinkable.

Internet Searches

Once upon a time, it was thought the internet held databases, and everything was a product of those databases. While that may have been true during the early years of the internet, it is not true today. Everything is a result of a search task in the modern world. What clothes to buy, what books to read, what restaurant to visit are all the result of a search. Additionally, you no longer need to wonder about something for longer than a few seconds because you can initiate a search and the answer is instantly at your fingertips. The consumer is such a curious group that they ask the internet to answer over three trillion questions for them every year on the search engines. There is no estimation of how many additional queries are made on travel sites for where to go on vacation, shopping databases to compare different items or other areas such as the United CPA Association for information on help in a business matter, but it must be upward of six to nine trillion or more. That means the average person makes around 1,500 search queries a year, or an average of 42 a day.

Social Networks

Social media site owners report that one account alone has more than 25 percent of the world population (1.1 billion people) checking into that single site alone each day. That means that billions of people talk about different products, shops, books, and businesses every day on their favorite social media sites, and some spend hours pasting on walls, sending tweets, and posting stories about their lives. During all that interaction with their keyboards, those consumers also spend time sharing information and pictures about products they love and products that have failed them. For some businesses, the word of mouth meant instant success, but for others, it meant the death of a dream.

Product Placement

Twenty years ago, if you had a new product for sale, you could request a product placement on a shelf or endcap that would entice the consumer to purchase your items. It was the biggest and best way to get the consumer to purchase your product once they were in store. In the past five years, however, it is estimated that millions of consumers no longer step into stores to purchase products, rather they look online for goods, place an order, and have it delivered to their car outside the store or delivered right to their home. This type of consumer purchasing power has done away with product placement, and for many retailers, it has come as quite a quandary as to how to counter the power the consumer has taken away from the advertising agency and distributor.

Commercial Overload

Long ago, there was a time that four or five commercials played in certain time slots between sections of television shows. When consumers complained and used the four or five minutes as a time to get food or take the dog outside, the time slot became known as commercial overload. Today, the consumer is constantly being bombarded by advertisements to sell him or her something using the cookies his or her computer stores; and just like before, consumers are ignoring the ads in record numbers. Not only has it become more difficult to catch the consumer’s attention, but researchers have noticed that ignoring the ad placement begins at a very early age now as children begin using the internet and learn to focus on what they choose, rather than having their attention reverted away by something colorful and flashy. That means the world of advertising is going to have to learn to capture the consumer’s attention in new ways, and it will be interesting to see what advertisers come up with.

The world of business has been forever changed by the internet over the past 25 years. Some say it has been good for the business world, and others claim it has been massively destructive. Only time will tell what the real story is.

Why Fintech Will be The End of Traditional Banking

/in /by

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective Article |Fintech|Why Fintech Will be The End of Traditional BankingIt’s a brave new world out there. As always, technology is having a profound effect on the world around us and the way we navigate through life. Who would have thought 20 years ago we would be walking around with miniature computers in our pockets? That these devices would be able to connect to the other side of the world in mere seconds? That these devices would not be restricted sending across voices but would include rich video as well? And that these devices would become more than ‘just’ communication devices? That we would use them for reading news, our entertainment, to shop online, to order food, to book a cab, and to take care of more serious business, such as authentication and finances?

The latter has really found an accelerant in mobile devices and app development. The so-called Fintech industry has been made possible by the widespread ownership of smartphones and always-on connectivity. Driven by the question ‘why’ things are the way they are, Fintech is challenging the status quo, namely traditional banks, on ‘business as usual’. Why do you need a physical branch, why do you need paper statements, why do you need to deal with an organisation that is built around handling cash? These are some of the fundamental questions that Fintech businesses start with, which expose that the banking industry is woefully behind on the times. It’s nearly impossible to have multiple savings pots with a traditional bank, whereas this with app-focused Fintech companies is as easy as creating a folder on your computer.

If anything, Fintech is putting the customer central again. It tries to remove the hoops that consumers must jump through, just to be a client. A wider movement is noticeable beyond just online-only (app-based) banks, which can be seen in how people can get mortgages and loans. Take Credit Culture, for example, which helps you take out a loan as easy and responsible as it can be, fully automated and online. The human assessment element, which can be time-consuming and costly, is taken away and replaced with algorithms and machine learning, being able to offer better rates which are more customised to an individual’s situation. It’s this customer-centric approach the general audience is responding to and younger generations, millennials and Gen Z in particular, are flocking to these types of solutions, rather than going to a traditional bank. This hasn’t gone unnoticed.

Over the last few years, the traditional banks have started responding to this trend in the market and bringing their own Fintech-esque solutions. This is happening with varying degrees of success. The problem that traditional banks really have is that they still are held to the restrictions that make them a traditional bank in the first place. This means the capital expenditures they have (physical assets such as costly buildings), staff that needs to be paid, shareholders that need to be kept happy and much more.

And this is the core of Fintech and why it is transforming and disrupting how we will handle our finances today and in the future. It challenges the very heart of traditional banks, not in how the exterior looks, but in the way, it’s built, brick by brick, pixel by pixel.

How Is Tech Benefiting The Healthcare Industry?

/in /by

The healthcare industry has seen a rise in the tech available to them in the last couple of years. The industry is benefiting greatly from all of the new tech that they can now use to diagnose and keep better patient records. You might be wondering how tech is doing this for the healthcare industry, and you’re not alone. In this article, we are going to be looking at some of the benefits that tech has brought to this industry in recent years.

StrategyDriven Editorial Perspective | Healthcare | Business Technology

Improving Efficiency

One of the biggest benefits is that efficiency has been improved, and is still improving. Items like portable ultrasound machines make it possible to move the equipment instead of the patient which can save a lot of time. You know if you have been in a hospital how busy it is, and how manic it can get. This is why improving efficiency is always a goal, and one that tech happily obliged to.

Using tablets instead of or alongside paper records has made keeping patients data safe much more manageable. Now, people can’t just come in and pick up a medical history without having the proper authority. As well as this, it is far easier to lose paper copies of patient files than it is to lose that which is on a tablet. Having all the tablets linked means that any doctor or nurse can access a patient file without having to dig through mountains of paperwork.

Faster Results

With tech evolving all the time, getting the results from a test can be a lot quicker. This means that patient care can be given faster, which in some cases could save a life. Anybody who knows about the medical profession knows that it can be a case of seconds between life and death. With improved speeds of getting medical test results, patients can be treated more quickly, and given the best chance possible.

Easier Diagnosis

The more advanced the equipment, the better the imaging. This the case with items such as a portable ultrasound machine. With crystal clear imaging, it can be easier for doctors to see, and therefore diagnose what the issue is with the patient. Previously, it had been known to happen that something that looked like an issue could have been a spot on the machine, but with new tech coming in to play, the room for error here is significantly reduced.

Growing Medical Practices

Thanks to a lot of new medical equipment being available, it is a lot easier for doctors and dentists, like this dentist in New York, to grow their medical practices. This means that they can see and treat more patients, as the equipment is readily available to do so. By doing this, patients no longer have to go out of their way to go to a medical practice, because the one closest to them is full.

We hope that you have found this article useful, and now know some of the ways in which tech has been benefiting the healthcare industry. These are just a few of the benefits, if you want to know more, you can find these online.

Keep On Truckin’? The Future Of The Haulage Industry

/in , /by

At this moment in time, many entrepreneurs are concerned about the welfare of their businesses that are, seemingly, being left in the past. The trucking industry is one of those. If you are managing a small freight, or your employees have concerns about being usurped by autonomous driverless trucks, what does the future of the trucking industry hold?

Are Drivers Being Put Out Of Jobs?

Because so many of the modern approaches to the any industry is hedging its bets on automation, and with the advent of driverless trucks on the horizon, the average truck driver is, naturally, very concerned about their earning potential. But, the overarching ideal with driverless trucks is that it’s not meant to put people out of jobs, but rather make those that already work in the industry operate far safer. Of course, it’s not all going to be automated, we’re going to need people to refuel the vehicles, react in emergency situations, and so forth.

Are The Rules And Regulations Going To Change?

As it stands, the industry looks like it’s going to operate in the same capacity as it ever did. For any startup business looking to trade in the trucking industry, the standardized documents, such as the freight broker bond and so forth, are still going to be commonplace. The rules and regulations of the modern trucking industry are looking to stay in place for the near future. But of course, as automation rears its head and becomes more commonplace, this does bring up a lot more quibbles as far as monitoring the machinery is concerned. But in the meantime, this is quite difficult to regulate because there is such a big transition period occurring, from the humanized aspect, through to the automated approach. Luckily, there are trucking permit services and similar resources to help navigate the rules and regulations.

Does It Make Your Entrepreneurial Role Easier?

There are changes on the horizon, that you may very well be concerned that it’s going to make your role far more difficult. This isn’t the intention. With automation, the trucking industry is going to be far more self-sufficient. The idea behind automating every aspect of the trucking industry, not just the trucks themselves, but the loading and unloading, is supposed to make the entire process cost-effective, but also safer. Yes, this should mean an easier life for any entrepreneur, but as we all know, machinery breaks down on occasion. So this does make many workers naturally reticent to embracing automation completely. But, the idea behind a lot of these processes is to imbue the human and the non-human aspects together perfectly. So in this respect, it should make life easier for you.

As a business opportunity, the trucking industry is very much up in the air at the moment, because its undergoing so many potentially drastic changes. But for the dynamic and new age entrepreneur, there has never been a better time to take advantage of all this changing technology and major developments, not just in the trucking industry, but the automation of every industry. As a business opportunity, it’s imperative that you get on board this exciting time now. And for those who are already concerned within the industry, it’s time to roll with the changes.