41% of US consumers planned to shop on Black Friday this year.
Holiday promotions by retailers are earlier and earlier every year. The buzz has moved progressively from “Cyber Monday” to Black Friday and finally to Thanksgiving Day itself, with reports of mass merchants beginning their sales in the middle of what is for many still an important family holiday.
Continue reading… “Cyber Monday will remain biggest ecommerce day of the year”
More men from Shanghai than those in other parts of the country want women to split the bill.
A recent survey in Shanghai polled around 44,000 eligible men and women in China found that some Shanghai guys out on their first date expect their women to split the bills!
Continue reading… “Dating survey has men in Shanghai seeing red”
Young, urban African consumer generation on the rise.
There is tremendous potential in Africa and most investors and businesses know this by now. Africa is the world’s second fastest growing region, second to Asia. And it may come as a surprise to most that Africa’s single-largest business opportunity is the rising consumer market.
Continue reading… “The rising consumer markets in Africa”
We are seeing more and more where the mom has the anchor job in the family and the dad either doesn’t work or works in a flexible job.
After Gail McGovern’s daughter Annie was born, she and her husband established what came to be known as the “kitchen calendar rule.” McGovern worked for AT&T overseeing 10,000 employees; her husband ran a large unit of Hewlett-Packard. They both needed to travel regularly for work, but one of them also needed to be home for Annie.
Mobile health becoming more popular among smartphone owners.
Mobile health is starting to become popular in the U.S.. In 2010, the Pew Internet and American Life Project reported that just 17 percent of cell phone owners used their devices to look up health information. But the organization said that figure has climbed to 31 percent in a new study released last week.
Transplanting some leafy green seedlings at the grand opening of Singapore’s first commercial vertical farm.
Singapore is taking local farming to the next level by opening of its first commercial vertical farm.
Vertical farming is like skyscrapers with vegetables climbing along the windows or like a library-sized greenhouse with racks of cascading vegetables instead of books.
Continue reading… “Singapore opens world’s first commercial vertical farm”
Taiwanese entrepreneurs have begun to seek market opportunities outside the U.S. in the phenomenon called the reverse brain drain.
Many foreign entrepreneurs clamor at America’s gates to get a piece of the innovation incubator of Silicon Valley. But Jerry Chang, a serial entrepreneur and Taiwanese immigrant, has done what most hopeful incomers would consider the unthinkable and taken his business offshore. In 2009, he established mobile payment company Mobile Radius. Rather than found the company in the U.S., let alone his native Taiwan, Chang decided to take his business to China. To many, his decision is a surprising one. Chang does not face the typical obstacles most immigrant entrepreneurs encounter. He acquired U.S. citizenship over two decades ago and has significant experience in the tech field. His first company, Clarent Corp., had boasted a client list of big-named companies like AT&T Worldnet, China Telecom, and Telstra.
If there is anything that the Silicon Valley worships it is the network effect. Startups are plucked from obscurity and elevated to fame and fortune. The list includes nearly every technology success story of the past 15 years. Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, eBay, and PayPal. Each have soared to multi-billion-dollar valuations on the power of the network effect.
Continue reading… “The network effect is not what it used to be”
The process of getting a visa is slow, expensive, time-consuming, and often unsuccessful.
It seemed like all of the stars were aligning for Jay Meattle in early 2010. He had raised several hundred thousand dollars from investors in Boston for his start-up, Shareaholic. And the company, which enables people to easily share online content they find interesting, had just passed the milestone of 1 million users.
Time to rethink the who, what, where, why and how of big data.
It is probably time to rethink the who, what, where, why and how of big data. There has been a surge of important news in the past couple weeks, where we are approaching a period of relative calm and can finally assess how the space has evolved in the past year. Here are the top five trends shaping up that should change almost everything about big data in the near future, including how it’s done, who’s doing it and where it’s consumed.
Continue reading… “Top 5 trends that are changing how we do big data”
Top brands on Instagram
Of the world’s biggest 100 brands, 54 percent are now connecting with fans and customers on Instagram, and brand adoption on Instagram is growing faster than Google+ and Pinterest.
Continue reading… “54% of the world’s top 100 brands are now on Instagram”
MOOC is massive open online course
Recently there have been many discussions over the topic of MOOCs. MOOC stands for a massive open online course. It is a tuition-free course taught over the Web to a large number of students.
Continue reading… “Will academia be destroyed by massive open online courses?”
By delving into the futuring techniques of Futurist Thomas Frey, you’ll embark on an enlightening journey.
Learn More about this exciting program.