Diversity & Inclusion helps Recruitment & Retention

People often ask, how does promoting D&I within an organization help in exceeding revenue goals, expand market share, beat competition, and help gain happy customers? Some people may be surprised to hear that the business case for D&I not only exists but is now overwhelming. There is a growing body of research that shows that organizations that effectively weave in D&I into its strategy, policies and practice, tend to benefit in ways that go beyond the optics.

 

Let us just discuss two primary benefits today. A professional journey for an employee begins with getting hired. Research shows that leveraging D&I becomes a valuable asset in attracting the best talent and in retaining good talent. Companies that are diverse and value diversity, get an advantage of getting referrals from diverse sources. 

 

Retention is a big challenge for many organizations, especially when unemployment rates are lower. Employee Benefit News (EBN) reports that the cost to an organization to hire a replacement and train and bring them up to speed, when an employee leaves, is about 33% of a worker’s annual salary. In dollar figures, for an employee earning a median salary of $100,000 a year, it is about $33,000.  Hiring costs may be multiplied several fold for higher level employees, with unique skill sets. In organizations that value and leverage diversity, candidates feel more welcome and comfortable and are therefore less desirous of leaving. In addition to reduced costs, an organization that is competitive in its ability to retain talent also experiences reduced turnover hassle, reduced training time and therefore more productive time, increased overall productivity, better customer experience, knowledgeable company experts, and better morale. 

As a Diversity and Inclusion trainer, I feel grateful that organizations are increasingly acknowledging this reality and make space for insightful conversations to take place on this issue. However, D&I training should never be about checking off the box and is also less effective when done in reaction to bad publicity or a law suit. D&I conversations are most impactful when engaged pro actively, and when diversity is leveraged as an asset rather than a liability to deal with. This year, the conference at @TiEsv @TiEcon #TiEcon2020 has a track dedicated to discussing diversity and inclusion in organizations. Registration is open at http://www.tie.org .  Also here is a link http://bit.ly/38EWWAU to my diary and more of my thoughts on D&I and some advice to entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs set to converge at TiEcon 2020

PeterDrucker has famously said, “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” And that is the central core of the theme at TiEcon 2020.

If you are an entrepreneur then TiEcon 2020 is the place where you want to CONVERGE. There’s plenty here for entrepreneurs. You might find just find the right idea, timely advice, meet a mentor, pair up with a partner, or perhaps connect with an interested investor. Very likely an entrepreneur is likely to find something here that will be a catalyst for them to begin to CREATE the environment to bring that innovation to fruition. TiEcons have always offered an environment to ELEVATE innovation from earliest idea stage to its fullest potential.

TiEcon 2020 tracks are announced and they are extremely relevant to current environment and very exciting. In the coming weeks, you will hear a great deal about the tracks, speakers, and keynotes. There are tracks and events that may offer something for all attendees like entrepreneurship and startup bootcamp. And then there are tracks that we all hear about and are on the cutting edge of new developments like cloud, security, IOT and ML.  There are also tracks and events that feature the human side of an organization and soft mentoring side of this conference like diversity and inclusion and global and mentor connect, and young entrepreneurs.

With convergence of well over 4500 attendees, 220 speakers, 13+ tracks, 1300 industry leaders, from 22+ countries, there is something here for every entrepreneur to sow the seeds for creation of that innovative idea into something magnificent or elevate it to something amazing. If you are intrigued, remember it all starts with convergence at TiEcon 2020. Registration is open at early bird price at www.tiecon.org .

Imagine how emerging technologies may reshape our world

Among the hottest new emerging technologies for 2018, picked by MIT Technology Review, here are some that caught my attention. While 3D printing has been around for a while, it’s only been for plastics, while printing anything in metal is challenging and costly. But recent strides in 3D metal printing that are combining sophisticated software with cheap metal printers (e.g. Lawrence Livermore National Labs, Markforged, Desktop Metal etc.) are enabling precise control of microstructure of metals and will likely enable mass production of parts. Just imagine, you scrape your new Lexus Mini against a pole in the narrow parking space and you get home in the evening and 3D print a new bumper.

Or imagine a city that makes sense.  A recent project in Toronto, called Quayside is designing urban neighborhoods built around digital technologies. Through an extensive network of sensors, data will be gathered on every aspect of urban life from air quality to noise levels to people’s daily activity patterns and decisions about design and policies will be made to make life more affordable, pleasant, fun and environmentally friendly.

Or imagine your baby arriving into the world with a report card that offers probabilities of heart attack, cancer, getting addicted to alcohol or tobacco, or being smarter than average, or being too competitive. LOL.  Through huge genetic studies, some involving more than a million people, this may become possible. It can bring so many new challenges that we better start thinking about all the implications.

Or imagine the possibilities of AI. Currently Artificial Intelligence is used mostly in the tech industry. But how AI will transform industries from medicine to manufacturing and energy, are endless. Recently at Ichan School of Medicine in Mount Sinai, a project called “Deep Patient” is based on use of AI to go through mounds of health data, in order to obtain insights about disease risk. With the use of deep learning, a machine learning tool, the computer is learning new things without prior programming. Similarly, at University of Montreal, in an approach known as GAN or a generative adversarial network, two networks are trained on the same data but pitted against each other. This dueling neural networks become proficient and over time gain an independent ability to make sense of the world. And when Artificial Intelligence acquires capability for imagination, the possibilities are endless on how it will impact all aspects of our lives.

You can read about top 10 breakthrough technologies of 2018 at https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2018/

Virtual reality, Augmented Reality, Autonomous vehicles and Artificial Intelligence will all intersect with Data, Cloud and will reshape our world in unimaginable ways. Attend TiEInflect 2018 www.TiEInflect.org this Friday and Saturday and get insights into which new technology innovations will have an immediate profound impact on our lives and which ones hold the future potential to turn our world upside down. 

Challenges and Opportunities in DevOps

After Agile and Waterfall, recent red hot trend in creating optimum software engineering culture in organizations, has been DevOps. DevOps is about unifying software development and operations and aligning it with shared business and product objectives. Creating smoothly functioning DevOps culture helps organizations shorten development cycles and ensure dependable and timely releases.

With DevOps enabling real-time visibility in every layer of software construction, the risk of rapid innovation is reduced as communication barriers are dissolved between teams and feedback loops are shortened. Objective single source data through shared dashboard reduces finger pointing. Companies that have not yet adopted DevOps, increasingly feel the pressure to do so. However, when companies seek to adopt DevOps, they also face challenges.

Creating a smoothly functioning DevOps culture, requires creating an optimum environment for the shift in mindset to take hold and enabling a smooth transition process through soft and hard skills training.  Traditionally, goals of Development and Operations are not aligned and handovers between different teams are costly and time consuming. A company seeking to adopt DevOps culture, needs to overcome this mentality and create product aligned team culture, away from project based culture. This is a major mindset shift that may require restructuring in staff and reporting lines, in addition to skills based training. While there is high barrier to entry with microservices, the move to automation and continuous delivery is facilitated by replacing or changing older legacy infrastructure to microservices architecture.

In any organization but more so in one seeking to adopt DevOps culture, people on the team are going to be the most important resources, for a smooth transition. Adopting newer tools may be effective only to the extent that staff receives training to use them and the tools are well integrated with the existing infrastructure.  A shift in culture must be gradual and include change management training to help people embrace the change. It will be easier to bring Dev and Ops teams on board to adopting newer tools if the focus is moved away from personalities and preferences to broader picture and larger, overarching goals of the company.  While the change may be scary at first, adoption may be smoother with objective data and feedback loops from small scale deployments and other teams to see the benefits of it working in real time.

Exciting track at TiE Inflect 2018, the largest entrepreneurship conference to take place in May at Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, will feature VCs and industry leaders discussing trends, opportunities, and strategies to deal with challenges. Entrepreneurs with eyes towards innovation in DevOps will also get to do a deep dive in the Startup bootcamp, and may learn to become investor ready, learn to effectively network and maximize visibility, and fine tune presentations and pitches. Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .

Continuing Innovation in CyberSecurity – check out track at TiEInflect 2018

Cloud revolution that began over a decade ago, has transformed business models and working practices around cybersecurity. And yet continuous innovation is imperative when it comes to cybersecurity. Cybercrime damages are expected to rise to $6 trillion annually, by 2021. Hence cybersecurity and cloudsecurity represent a rapidly growing market today with the potential for revenues in excess of $10 billion by 2022.  

Increasing cybersecurity threats have encouraged organizations to leverage technology advances, and fight back with a variety of strategies and tactics. For instance, leveraging big data, enables a security solution provider to see bigger patterns and connect the dots to understand the threats. Similarly, deep learning, an advanced form of artificial intelligence, has made a huge impact on cyber security. When a machine learns what a malicious code looks like, it can identify unknown codes as benign or malicious with extremely high accuracy, and in real time.  Other technology solutions that have been implemented include, running applications in containers (e.g. Docker), instead of virtual machines, advances in virtual customer premise equipment (vCPE), and more flexible, open and cloud-based WAN technologies rather than proprietary or specialized WAN technologies.  

These and other strategies are aimed at identifying management systems, people and devices accessing the networks, verification of authorization levels, advanced threat analytics to flag behavioral changes, and virtualized security to follow and protect the data whereever it goes. Largest entrepreneurship conference, TiEInflect 2018, to take place in Santa Clara Convention Center, in May, will again feature focused Cybersecurity track with exciting keynotes and speakers from leading cloud and cyber security companies. Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .

 

Technology disruptors like AI & Data reshaping Marketing & Advertising with improved personalization & enhanced targeting

Technology is impacting every area of our lives. Blending marketing and advertising with technology dubbed MarTech and AdTech, is entirely changing the marketing landscape. When combined with big data and AI, there is now greater efficiency in advertising and marketing; from building, managing, delivering and optimizing campaigns, to placing, buying, and selling ads, to targeting to most optimum potential buyers.

But it’s not about build it and they will come or turn it on and it will deliver. Often martech purchase decisions underdeliver. As an entrepreneur, if you plan to lead your company through various stages of business lifecycle from seed stage to growth stage to expansion and maturity, then you will encounter an array of marketing challenges that will require different strategies and tactics.  While in earlier phase, your focus will be on building customer and prospect lists to drive product awareness, it will soon evolve into tracking and accessing purchasing activities, supporting customer segmentation based on demographics, past purchase history and gaining deeper insight about the customer to support segmentation and personalized targeting.

At TiEInflect 2018, the largest entrepreneurship conference to take place in May at Santa Clara Convention Center, a focused track on MarTech will feature exciting topics like “Marketing to the power of AI”, “Marketing maturity model for entrepreneurs” and more. Register for the conference at www.tieinflect.org .

IoT Track Preview at TiEcon 2016

Internet of Things (IoT) is not a buzzword any more.  It is real, with a real ability to make a significant impact to the economy.  An estimated 50 billion devices around the globe, will be connected to the Internet, by 2020.  These newly connected devices, sensors, actuators etc. will monitor, control, analyze and optimize our world, in real time.  This kind of optimized use of technology to sense, predict, influence, and control our physical world, will not only impact the economy but will impact to the core, how we live our lives.

At TiEcon 2016, participants will get a glimpse into the future of the world where IoT will be front and center.  They will get a flavor for how IoT is causing disruptions across domains, from agriculture to healthcare, from energy to insurance; how IoT is helping create smart cities, and may help solve global world problems around water, waste, energy, transportation, and environment management.  

I am excited about TiEcon for just this one track.  But every track is exciting and features cutting edge technologies that will exert disruptive impact on the future of humankind.  Guess I will need to clone myself to enjoy all the exciting tracks and panels.  There are also plenty of opportunities to network with like minded professionals, eager to participate in how the future unfolds.  Stay tuned and feel free to follow my blog for more information on panels, tracks, topics, and speakers at TiEcon, 2016.  Friends, this is the most exciting conference on entrepreneurship that takes place each year.  I will look forward to seeing you at TiEcon, 2016.  Please register for TiEcon, as my friend, with this link  www.tiecon.org?-r=Darshana .

 

 

Changing World of Medtech Investors (includes Software, Big Data, Mobile, Biotech & more) – 2015 WSGR Conference

While there has been a decline in traditional medtech investments, non-traditional investors are investing in new and emerging areas, in medtech.  Software and IoT investors are interested in containing hospital costs and increasing operational efficiency in healthcare institutions.  Biotech investors are interested in alternative therapies, and internet investors are looking at ways to change the way devices are sold and big data investors are looking at opportunities to contain disease outbreaks and better manage large disease populations.  International investors are tapping US expertise to build medtech businesses at home.

A panel at WSGR 2015 Medical Device Conference, moderated by Uday Kumar, Founder and CEO at Element Science Inc., addressed the changing world of medtech investors.  Joining Kumar on the panel were Tom Rodgers, SVP & Managing Director at McKesson Ventures; Andrew Atwell, Principal at Global Innovation Center, Strategic Investments Group; Asha Nayak, Global Medical Director at Intel Corporation; and Conrad Wang, Senior Director of Corporate Development at Medtronic.  Below are some highlights from very interesting panel discussion on changing face of medtech investment.

According to Wang, Medtronic vision is to be a collaborative solution provider in healthcare, with a specific focus on new therapies and geographic diversity of emerging markets.  His advice to entrepreneurs, “focus on how your solutions can create value”.  Instead of being enamored by a technological enhancement, entrepreneurs should keep in mind the impact that the new breakthrough may have on the stakeholders in the healthcare delivery chain. Due to a combination of factors, chronic conditions are increasing globally.  Medtronic looks for opportunities that would enable healthcare providers from engaging in episodic care of chronic diseases to providing continuous care.

Atwell said there are numerous opportunities in the Big Data space, particularly in consumer generated data.  “Our main driver of revenue are mobile devices”, said Atwell.  There are also many challenges.  For instance, it is challenging to get accurate data and see meaningful trends.  It is also a challenge to understand early on how large the market might be and how quickly adoption may happen.  Atwell said his group invests in early and seed stage to A and B rounds and typically invest from $250K to $3M, in any given opportunity.  “We focus on building collaboration among experts from data analytics, health IT, and workflow efficiency”, said Atwell.  He further observed, “additionally, we also look at behavior change space since there is so much access to individuals through their mobile devices”.  Even if they may not help exert deep influence and impact in changing behaviors, mobile devices can exert significant influence over much larger population and can be an effective behavior change tool, said Atwell.

According to Nayak, Intel approach is to provide a piece of healthcare solution that fits in enhancement of health and quality of life, while keeping in mind TCO or total cost of ownership, in healthcare.  Her advice to entrepreneurs, “you should know if you are able to provide a piece that will fit in total solution, even if that may be a few years later”.  From consumer devices, typically wearables, an entrepreneur should be able to harness value in a trustworthy manner.  There are some key questions that an entrepreneurs must ask. 1) Is the data trustworthy, not just in accuracy, but can it be consistently used by the right person?  2) With wearables, one needs to add unequivocal value and discern it from gobs of data.  3) An entrepreneur must consider how it will fit into the current workflow without adding more time to the system.  Entrepreneurs often don’t get this piece, said Nayak.  4) Security of data is critical.  Anytime data needs to be securitized, any time data moves, Intel makes money on it, said Nayak.  5) How is the cost and care impacted through wearables.  Nayak said, Intel is interested in building ecosystems and platforms around the notion of building long term improvement in healthcare, at lesser cost.  Intel invests in all stages from seed to commercialization.   “My group is interested in partnership, and all of our investment is strategic”, said Nayak.  Many areas of interest include, telemedicine, patient management of telemedicine, management of chronic and acute care and also precision medicine, genomics, and analytics that can extract data, said Nayak.

According to Rodgers now the focus is on whether or not an entrepreneur can you navigate the carpteted area of hospitals and provide actual solution that makes a difference.  His advice to startups is to position devices as service.  Device can also be a powerful tool to capture data to ultimately keep people healthy, said Rodgers.  However, average provider does not have the time or the training to deal with the deluge of data.  In order for the data to become actionable, we may need a whole layer sitting in between the patient and the provider, monitoring the datasets, observed Rodgers.  He also advised that entrepreneurs may focus on emerging growth areas and shift to models that enable direct consume care.  We focus on strategic areas, not tactical, said Rodgers.

Tesla Motors, Jay Vijayan – TiEcon 2015 Keynote Preview

English: The Tesla Model S is an all-electric sedan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

High ramp up and extremely fast global growth of Tesla Motors, has led to a jump from $204 million to almost $4 billion in annual revenue, from the beginning of 2012 to now. Automotive industry is built on the concept of vertical integration of owning both the manufacturing and as much of the supply chain as possible, and Tesla has mastered the science. With many best in class applications like e-Commerce, ERP, Service, Supply Chain and Logistics systems, Tesla has thus far achieved almost seamless vertical integration, with a closed feedback loop with its customers.

Tesla’s recent announcement to build “gigafactory” for building batteries (very likely in partnership with its current supplier Panasonic), may help greatly reduce cost of its power source, and may help expedite the development of advanced battery technology.

Tesla is moving forward with lofty goals and a startup culture characteristic of innovation and entrepreneurship, prevalent in the Silicon Valley. Jay Vijayan, CIO at Tesla Motors will give a keynote address at TiEcon 2015, the largest entrepreneurship conference. Enjoy the opportunity to network with like-minded professionals, and get ideas and inspiration on what helps build the culture of innovation in Silicon Valley and register for the conference at http://www.tiecon.org .  Register at  https://www.123signup.com/register?id=ygszb&ref=4182698 to get a $100 discount on the two-day conference at the non-member rate.  When prompted, enter the promo code VOL500 at checkout.

PS – Register for EPPICon Annual Conference on March, 28th that focuses on #LifeScience #entrepreneurship & #innovation at http://www.eppicglobal.org and use promo codes FECON15 to get $25 off registration and student can use the promo code STCON15 to get $75 off registration.

PS – Register for http://www.healthtechnologyforum.com annual conference on May 27 and 28 and celebrate “coming together for health”.

Lean LaunchPad for Life Science Entrepreneurs

Recently, Karl Handelsman, Founder, Codon Capital, talked about the Lean LaunchPad Entrepreneurship program, at www.bio2devicegroup.org event.  Handelsman, with Allan May (Managing Director at Life Science Angels), are instructors in the Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences program at UCSF and also will be teaching at NIH, in the future.  Handelsman is the Therapeutics cohort and May is the Medical Device cohort.

It is a mistake to assume that pre-clinical programs are risky and they need to focus on easier low hanging fruit or they must take 10+ years and a billion dollars to create value, said Handelsman.  We have a duty to search for the path to unlock the value of the idea as industrially relevant innovation, and there are examples of biotech startups reaching that point in 18-30 months, said Handelsman.  Lean LaunchPad program teaches scientists and clinicians in startups to do a real world assessment of their idea or technology, before plunking down millions of dollars, in an idea.  Entrepreneurs receive training in determining their product’s market viability, regulatory risk, potential clinical utility, and also likely financing vehicles before making big dollar investments in research, design, and manufacturing.

English: Molecular graphics images were produced using the UCSF Chimera package from the Resource for Biocomputing, Visualization, and Informatics at the University of California, San Francisco (supported by NIH P41 RR001081). PDB rendering based on 1a8e. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Entrepreneurs need good operational models that build a context of value creation, said Handelsman.  Investors like value, not milestones.  “Investors want to invest money and they want to hear a business case, and operational milestones don’t get you there”,  stressed Handelsman.

Big things often have small beginnings and start with contributions from many small pockets.  Sharing the case of a company that started with collaboration and became the behemoth, Genentech,  Handelsman said, entrepreneurs need to start thinking about collaboration, not competition, and begin to look at models of collaboration that would create true value.  After all, strategic alliances built the Silicon Valley and there are many diverse and creative ways of creating partnerships.  Entrepreneurs need to talk with others and be really good listeners.

Successful entrepreneurs are not thoughtless risk takers, but approach problems in a disciplined way.  Value creation for therapeutics begins with thoughtful consideration of who would benefit from solving a certain problem; patients, payers, insurances companies or any other entity?  Once entrepreneurs can figure that out, they can go to a VC and explain the business case.  Value creation, after all, is not what entrepreneurs think or believe, but an idea or concept that gets external validation from the customer.  “Do not constantly worry about keeping the concept in the stealth mode, and talk to a lot of people”, advised Handelsman.  VCs do not count, they are not potential customers.  In the end, one could have a sexy product, but if it does not solve a pressing problem then it is not creating value.  Real answers to key commercialization questions, in the case of therapeutics, lie outside the lab, and entrepreneurs need to actively engage and talk with customers, partners, regulators and so on to figure out the value of their product.  Lean LaunchPad methodology therefore, helps to validate the product, before commercial strategy is considered, saving time, money, resources and in some cases, helping guide the change in the trajectory, for more meaningful outcome.