We've been promised the store of the future for years. And now retailers are starting to take the idea seriously
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WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation
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Farid Mheir
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Will it have robots? No checkout counters? Virtual fitting rooms? Almost anything seems possible.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: retail store are here to stay but they will transform - here is a glimpse into what may be around the corner. 
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The annual report was compiled by mandiant consultants at FireEye based on hundreds of incident response investigations in many industry sectors. It offers recommendations on how organizations can improve the way they prevent, detect, analyze and respond to cyber attacks.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this detailed report on cyber security trends shows an alarming statistic: it takes almost 100 days to detect an intrusion into computer systems. Why is that, given that data security and privacy are so important? Not enough resources? Lack of trained personnel? Hackers too good? Read to find out.
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While there is evidence that the retail apocalypse is real offline. There are mixed signs about whether online retailing is experiencing a full apocalypse.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: traditional retailers and shopping malls are facing store closures as the eCommerce traffic continues to grow in popularity. This first part of a series provides some very useful insights and facts about what many are calling the retail apocalypse.
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Artificial intelligence may have been invented in the West, but you can see its future taking shape on the other side of the world.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: given how AI is crucial for the future of *everything* - from warfare to food production - it is essential that every state in the world invest in developing and adapting AI in every field, as China has been doing lately.
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As the Buffer team grows, we've added more new tools to help us keep connected. Here are 7 new tools that power Buffer's remote work.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: more and more work is being done remotely. Learn from companies such as Buffer that have decided to have their complete workforce work remotely - and how they managed to pull it off. Digital transformation at its best! Also remote work lessons just in case you wanted to try it out: https://open.buffer.com/remote-work-lessons/
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Facial recognition is the new hot tech topic in China. Banks, airports, hotels and even public toilets are all trying to verify people’s identities by analyzing their faces. But the police and security state have been the most enthusiastic about embracing this new technology.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: this article and video from the Washington Post provide a great over view of what China is doing with face and object recognition as part of its massive 500M cameras (2020 estimates). Nowhere to hide... Same topic, see the BBC report and video: 7 minutes to get arrested http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-42248056/in-your-face-china-s-all-seeing-state Or the very good Bloomberg article : https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-17/china-said-to-test-facial-recognition-fence-in-muslim-heavy-area
PredictX's curator insight,
March 19, 2018 10:12 AM
"Banks, airports, hotels and even public toilets are all trying to verify people’s identities by analyzing their faces." Another unnerving #bigdata trend to look out for in China.
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Amazon spent $21.7 billion on shipping in 2017.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Amazon spends 14.2% of its net sales to fulfill orders and 12.2% to deliver them to consumers. Thus a quarter of the costs of products sold is allocated to logistical costs and this is the biggest hurdle to eCommerce wide adoption. Amazon and other pure plays have a number of key advantages over established brick-n-mortar retailers (no retail store costs, no store employees, etc.) but they have to battle with order preparation and delivery which traditional retailers delegate to their customers as they push their carts in the store aisle. In that context, recent announcement of Sobeys to leverage Ocado's automated warehouse technology or recent Amazon announcement to create a parcel delivery solution that competes with FedEx and UPS makes sense. Any retailer thinking of scaling its eCommerce operation should thus make sure that its business model is viable regarding fulfillment and shipping - all other elements of eCommerce are not an issue. - Amazon SWA service: http://fmcs.digital/blog/amazon-package-delivery-service-to-compete-with-fedex-and-ups-swa-ecommerce-disruption-retailapocalypse/ - Sobeys Ocado partnership: http://fmcs.digital/blog/u-k-s-ocado-taps-into-canadas-online-grocery-market-with-sobeys-tie-up-is-canada-mature-enough-to-have-automated-grocery-fulfillment-centers-ecommerce-robots/ - Ocado's technology: http://fmcs.digital/blog/video-shows-ocado-warehouse-technology-that-sobeys-has-acquired-to-prepare-grocery-orders-is-based-on-an-army-of-small-robots-working-on-3d-hive/
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I reached out for help a little while ago on Twitter and on LinkedIn to assess the size and state of the global AI talent pool—a crucial issue for the entire industry going forward. Thank you to those of you from around the world who responded in large numbers. Your generous input has gone into a new report that we at Element AI have developed. We now have a more detailed picture of the size and characteristics of the pool of AI experts going into 2018. I see this report as a living document that will continue growing with others’ contributions. Our broadest measure of the global talent pool is 22,000 individuals: it remains clear that the fight for talent will continue into the foreseeable future. Below are some of my observations on what I see happening around the world.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: A great analysis of the current pool of talent in AI worldwide - compiled by our local Montreal AI darling startup Element.ai. The conclusion: there are very few experts in the AI field today and even though tools and frameworks are available for newbies to get their feet wet, the learning curve is important. However, I will suggest that the pool of talent to "integrate" AI into other solutions - mobile apps, eCommerce, production systems, etc. - is much wider and grows exponentially fast. I like to draw parallels with the Internet of late 1990s when anyone with a computer and web browser could develop a website - but very few had the skills to create eCommerce software or scalable web infrastructure.
You can see the full report at jfgagne.ai/talent
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Organizations are looking to use DXPs as they move from web-centric to more pervasive, multichannel digital experiences. This Magic Quadrant will help those responsible for a range of customer-, employee- and partner-facing initiatives find the most suitable vendor for their needs.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the web has moved from being simply a digital brochure to the source where all other channels derive their content - from print brochures, ads, mobile, emails, etc. In that context it is not a surprise that web solutions (or web content management solutions) have become platforms. So important is this technology trend that retailers now consider their eCommerce solution as the most important tool when looking to replace their POS solution in store. Thus this review from Gartner can help identify that future enterprise leaders may not be IBM, Microsoft and Oracle but Acquia, Adobe or Sitecore. Then again, one should expect these leaders to acquire those DX platforms to keep their position within the organization. Fun times ahead!
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Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTER: this month's top 5 posts on digital transformation of business.
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This statistic shows the 20 companies with the highest expenditure on research and development in 2017.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: one chart say it all: retailers are not equipped to fight against Amazon unless they band together and innovate.
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In May, J.P. Morgan’s quantitative investing and derivatives strategy team, issued the most comprehensive report ever on big data and machine learning in financial services.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: AI will disrupt industries that had been left mostly alone by the digital Internet revolution: Finance, Accounting, Law, Medecine, etc. They are all industries that rely on visual or text analysis but require very simple processing to perform the most routine back office tasks. This report presents the impact in very detailed fashion and this summary is useful because it applies to many industries, if you adjust the terminology. It highlights one key element: learn to program and to analyze data because these are the jobs of the (near) future. For those crazy enough to read the 280 pages, here is the link: http://valuesimplex.com/articles/JPM.pdf
Graphics Design's curator insight,
January 30, 2018 7:51 AM
In the event that somebody says "please" and you hear "cheddar" recall that (record it). On the off chance that somebody says "entryway" and you hear "more" focus on that, don't disregard it or shut it out or accuse the speaker, simply perceive that it happened. Try not to contend with anyone or focus on their "you require a portable Hearing Aids". Watch your days concerning sound, what is the number on the TV volume control when you watch it without anyone else's input - what is the number when another person in the house is controlling
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Keynote at Andreessen Horowitz's annual 'Tech Summit' conference, talking about the state of tech today and what's likely to happen in the next decade: mobile, Google / Apple / Facebook / Amazon, innovation, machine learning, autonomous cars, mixed reality and crypto-currencies.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Benedict Evans from a16z always manages to summarize exactly where we are and where we are going. This presentation is a must see.
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The A.I. revolution is coming—and research firm CB Insights has identified the 100 most promising artificial intelligence startups.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: most companies in the list are US, some Canadian (GO-Habs-GO!) and some are Chinese. But watch out, AI may be "made in China" real soon! As I return from CES2018, I expect that future lists will be dominated by China in the coming years given the level of intensity that I have seen at the show. This is good (competition always is) but I have just one note of care: privacy protection may suffer if we are not careful. Case in point: China already uses public AI powered security cameras to track individuals and do public shaming in bus stops. More on this in a later post...
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Amazon is getting into more brick-and-mortar stores. While the retail giant purchased Whole Foods last year, Amazon had previously opened up a convenience store for employees under its own brand in Seattle in 2016.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I was floored when Amazon announced the GO concept in Dec 2016 (13 months ago!) and commented about it in different posts http://fmcs.digital/?s="amazon+go". Now their 1st store opens and pictures start surfacing. The big question now is: how are established retailers going to compete with this level of digital innovation given their anemic investments in R&D? Most don't even have a good eCommerce website. No wonder pundits predict a retail armageddon...
top 20 R&D spend: https://www.statista.com/statistics/265645/ranking-of-the-20-companies-with-the-highest-spending-on-research-and-development/ retail armageddon: https://news.usc.edu/121222/retail-armageddon-more-bankruptcies-in-four-months-than-all-of-2016/
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Deep learning has revolutionized the world of artificial intelligence. But how much does it improve performance? How have computers gotten better at different tasks over time, since the rise of deep learning?
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: a great review of the performance of Artificial Intelligence in areas such as gaming, image recognition, speech recognition, machine translation and natural language processing.
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Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: robots present a solution for the skilled labour shortage and requirements to cut production times and reduce costs in an era of personalization. Read the report for more data.
Dock and door systems's curator insight,
January 8, 2018 5:42 AM
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This paper examines the essential eight technologies that matter and what business leaders now need to do about them, and emerging technologies in general.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: A good summary of potential use cases and applications for key digital technologies that revolutionize business.
Jevachoudary's comment,
January 6, 2018 2:24 AM
These hacks really helpful,thanks for sharing.
https://goo.gl/AHvybK 
Naz Bhayani's curator insight,
January 8, 2018 1:21 PM
Latest Tech, for those looking to make big changes in their careers, here you go! learn, invest time and reap rewards
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Something that often bothers me about sci-fi is the loner inventor trope. A guy in a garage builds a robot, or AI, or frequently both that are somehow decades beyond the technology of his day. It’s hard to even appreciate how hard this is for robots to do, because it’s hard to appreciate how difficult walking still is for humanoids. I wrote a whole piece about the problem of building walking robots back in 2011 — it wasn’t pretty back then, and it’s still a challenge for most full-sized humanoids.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: we've heard that robots will replace humans for so many years now that we tend to dismiss such claims. This demonstration shows that this may change in the near future with huge impact on manufacturing of course but also in autonomous vehicles, delivery drones and maybe personal robots. And this would be something very significant given the difficulty that employers have finding workers for certain low skills jobs such as truck drivers https://www.forbes.com/pictures/lmh45edlmk/2017-30-under-30-the-st/#28c4963119b4
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It may come as no surprise that technology-centric roles stole the show among emerging jobs in the United States, but the prevalence of machine learning and data science roles and skills indicate a shift in the types of technology we can expect to be using in the near future, as well as what professionals should be preparing themselves for. Having an academic background and a comprehensive suite of skills were also strong trends, especially among professionals who are now machine learning engineers and data scientists. Both of these roles are also often held by professionals with 10 years or more of professional experience, so for those just starting out and having trouble landing one of these titles, don’t be discouraged! It’s always a good reminder that soft skills will always be important, no matter the profession. The ability to collaborate, be a leader, and learn from colleagues will stand out in interviews, and even more once starting a job.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the conclusion of the study is simple: go to University and study something related to technology. Simple, no?
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Google has gathered so much data, in so many areas, that it’s now crunching it together and creating features that Apple can’t make—surrounding Google Maps with a moat of time.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: Google has been capturing and translating data for a very long time and by doing so it can provide digital services that way better than anything else their competitors can do. This example of maps is just one in many but this one is particularly well documented. Kudos.
EntreCulturas's curator insight,
January 4, 2018 11:02 AM
En este estudio sobre las apps de geolocalizacion como Google Maps o Apple Maps, se muestra el mayor desarrollo de la primera. Google se ha actualizado principalmente permitiendo el acceso exacto al edificio concreto de una calle. Se puede ver clickando ,encima, una descripción detallada de la ubicación con opción de encontrar imágenes del interior.
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In response to growing concerns about autonomous weapons, a coalition of AI researchers and advocacy organizations released a fictitious video on Monday that depicts a disturbing future in which lethal autonomous weapons have become cheap and ubiquitous. The video was launched in Geneva, where AI researcher Stuart Russell presented it at an event at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons hosted by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots. Russell, in an appearance at the end of the video, warns that the technology described in the film already exists and that the window to act is closing fast.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: there is often a downside to advanced technology, especially those that can allow its owner dominance. In this video scenario, humans weaponize drones with AI. But the real danger is for superintelligent AI to turn against us humans. For more, read the amazing book Superintelligence: http://sco.lt/5uYgyn
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Disruptive technologies are transforming all end-to-end steps in production and business models in most sectors of the economy. The products that consumers demand, factory processes and footprints, and the management of global supply chains are being re-shaped to an unprecedented degree and at unprecedented pace. Industry leaders who were consulted believe that new technological solutions heralded by the Fourth Industrial Revolution – such as advanced robotics, autonomous systems and additive manufacturing – will revolutionize traditional ways of creating value. As the costs of deploying technology continue to fall, international differentials in labour costs will no longer be a decisive factor in choosing the location of production. The resulting greater spatial and temporal flexibility brought about by technology will bring locations of production and sale closer together, and drive major changes in the design of future value and supply chains. These trends will change the shape and form of globalization, and thereby impact the trajectory of goods. Regional and local flows will become more important, to the detriment of intercontinental trade.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: the world economic forum keeps putting out great reports on the impact of digital transformation. I love the illustrations, great summary of key trends and their adoption. Must read.
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Amazon Prime membership had flat growth in the US in the past year, according to a study of 1,000 US adults from Morgan Stanley.
Farid Mheir's insight:
WHY IT MATTERS: I reported in the past that Prime programme has a total value of 143B$ (http://sco.lt/8ot9NJ). These updated numbers show that growth continues outside the US. Expect Amazon to leverage its membership programme to wall-in its clients and protect it from competition. Tough road ahead for other retailers as Prime members will be looking to stay with the brand.
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Curated by Farid Mheir
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WHY IT MATTERS: another great article on what the store of the future may look like.