Author: Hannah Adler

03.11.19

For Redefining What It Means To Be A Leader

BY Hannah Adler < 1 MINUTE READ

Colin Iles has created a space for leaders to not only think outside the box, but smash it wide open. CEO of the Equinox Leadership and Innovation Centre, Colin is helping those in business stay strong against the current industry disruptors.

What is the Equinox Innovation Centre’s mission?

The Equinox is a purpose-built venue, created to help leadership teams hold frank and open discussions about how to survive and thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Board and C-level executives are paid to set and execute winning strategies. They have to continually present a unified front of confidence that their plans are not just the right plans, but the best plans. Asking them to openly discuss why they will probably fail, or if they are willing to adopt radically different business models, is challenging at the best of times. This is doubly so when they try to hold these conversations in their offices where hierarchies and political jockeying play a central role. We therefore built the Equinox to try to offer a solution to this problem. We wanted to create a safe space, where leaders can openly challenge their existing strategies, ask stupid questions and make  big decisions to pivot where necessary.

How crucial is it for entrenched organisations to grasp innovation?

Massively important. We are no longer living in a world where organisations can rely on their assets and legacy to protect themselves from extinction. Access to key technologies is becoming ubiquitous and so virtually anyone on the planet, who has a reasonable standard of education and internet access, is now a potential market disruptor.

 

Read more in the March/April 2019 issue of Fast Company South Africa.

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SW7 & Microsoft Share Secrets of the Trade

BY Hannah Adler 2 MINUTE READ

 

SW7 (Start with Seven), one of Africa’s largest technology acceleration teams, are partnering with Microsoft to bring a series of workshops to South Africa, aimed at technology focused businesses. Often dubbed the ‘rising continent’, Africa is filled with startups that are looking to accelerate their trajectory into the wider market. SW7 provides such companies with advice on enabling their businesses to grow and scale – at a pace they can dictate, depending on resources. SW7 has helped over 200 South African businesses in the last five years, and have recruited over 100 technology focused CEOs to mentor for them.

 

This year, SW7 has grabbed the opportunity to pair with Microsoft in an effort to combine missions, and provide more South African startups with the correct support and advice. Odette Jones, the co-founder of SW7, states that this move should be unparalleled and exciting for South African technology markets.

 

“South African technology markets are B2B. The Azure stack and the access to market          provided by Microsoft means they offer huge value to the ecosystem of growing and scaling technology businesses.”

Azure, one of Microsoft’s clouds will be offered to businesses for them to develop their applications and services. Ilana Baragwanath, lead of Head Start – the recently launched programme by Microsoft for startups – is adamant that this will strengthen local startup systems and prepare them to sell to the global marketplace.

What makes this collaboration so special is that the startups who involve themselves will have the opportunity to become Microsoft partners. Ilana excitedly states that this extra dimension of support is what makes this partnership unique.

 

What you need to know:

Duration: 6 months.

Where: Microsoft Offices, Bryanston

When: 12th March

Details: The workshops are available on demand. Businesses can access the tools and content digitally or otherwise, at a pace that suits them. It’s always open. Businesses may join at any time when they have the time and capacity to focus on their cloud business. Businesses are curated. Assessments are based on where businesses are, what their definitions of success are and are provided with the tools, processes and content to help them move towards their goals.

 

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03.04.19

The Logic Behind Quantitative Methods and Traditional Game Plans

BY Hannah Adler 3 MINUTE READ

In the southern suburbs of Cape Town, a company sits nestled in a complex. Inside, Ariel Sumeruk is directing a group of employees to provide the best possible service to their clients. They analyse data, optimise search engines and help clients assess how their brand is doing. Conversion Science’s brand is obvious from the get go. Sumerak – a physics major and entrepreneur – sits down with a smile and a laptop. He’s prepared to put the client’s needs first.

Starting a new company is daunting, and Sumeruk is honest about how it was no less so for him. Though he was contracted by Google as a trainer and helped grow a company into the biggest SEM in South Africa, his venture was littered from the start with possibilities of risk. His way of coping with the anxieties of starting his own business echoes the quantitative methods with which he serves his customers: look at the facts and measure them up. He prudently admits that if the company failed, he could always have applied for a new job after a couple of months and more than likely would have got it. Always the pragmatist, it seems, he goes on to explain how he his clients also benefit from this data-driven, and quantitative thinking.

Conversion Science exists to provide clients with the best possible service in optimised pay per click (PPC) campaigns. Their approach to this mission is twofold: Direct access between clients and their campaign manager, and a quantitative approach to analysing data. Growing a successful campaign relies less on intuition and more on black and white evidence. Whilst Sumeruk speaks highly of the importance of gut instinct, he is adamant that even the most intuitive must check their results.

To go forward without checking that the methods and strategies he’s employing are working for him is madness, and rightly so. He explains that a campaign strategy might seem like it’s working well due to its content because it got ten more shares than the last campaign, but without checking why it’s done well, it could be the time of day it was posted that contributed to the campaign’s success. His methods draw from his days as a quantitative physicist, and his success is just as quantifiable.

In the seven years since Sumeruk started the company in a homemade office, it has racked up a client list that reaches Kenya, Nigeria and further abroad. He attributes this success to his decision to reject a financial injection in the startup stage. This rejection of financial help left Conversion Science free of any external influences or agendas, which has allowed the company’s identity to flourish. Conversion Science thus became the boutique service providing company it is recognised as today, and quantitative emphasis characterises the brand’s approach seven years on from its inception.
Sumeruk further explains how this quantitative approach has helped him best serve clients abroad. Different countries have different cultures and their own favourite mediums for accessing customers. Focusing solely on newspapers might work at home, but audiences abroad may be more active on their mobile phones.

Although we can assume we know best, he states, it is only after checking methods against results that a method can be approved. Sumeruk and his team therefore constantly check the strategies that they employ abroad, so that they steadily continue to become global players. It is this reliance on quantifiable data that makes Conversion Science reliable. Nothing says reliable more than a company practising what it preaches.

It’s second characteristic is its “laser focus” on client-faced service. Conversion Science work with clients rather than in opposition to them, meaning they always put their client’s needs at the forefront, rather than profit for themselves. They prefer traditional methods of customer service, and ironically, traditional methods is what they believe will make them one of the top players in the future. An interesting dichotomy exists between their promotion of traditional values and their current training in Artificial Intelligence.

Though Sumeruk is aware of the positives of traditional methods, he also is not naive to the uses of AI. What AI can do in minutes, one person could take a month to do. Their AI research division is being trained up to proactively analyse client’s data. Whilst the integration of AI into Conversion Science is still underway, Sumeruk insists that they are already well positioned, as the industry has been moving to a more measurable and quantitative approach over the last couple of years. “We have a head start on most of our peers since we had been focused on that since the beginning.” Quantitative analytics is the way forward, and this company was on the path years ago.

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01.30.19

The AI fuelling conference planning

BY Hannah Adler 3 MINUTE READ

Pronoia.io is paving the digital way for the events industry. At the touch of a button their platform allows users to arrange a complete conference –  completing the jobs of hundreds in seconds. How does an idea like this originate? How would one implement it? We talk with one of the founders, Deepak Jhavar to discuss why the world needs its first AI-driven conference platform.

Where did the idea for an AI-driven conference originate? What was the gap you noticed in AI and automation?

I ran a B2B conference company from 2000 to 2006 and quit to join a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC). It’s a company that does not have a full banking license or is not supervised by a national or international banking regulatory agency. When I quit my job, I took stock of how technology changed our lives when connecting with old friends in the event space. I realised that the

The event industry was using the same processes such as excel, cold calling, paper records etc. from when I started in the industry back in the early 2000s. That was a eureka moment. For the most part, the events industry hadn’t really evolved with today’s tech capabilities. That was the opportunity I believe we’ve identified. We started by creating a detailed process flow chart and established two rules of thumb: first, any task, which is easy for humans and difficult for machines, should be done by humans. Second, any task, which is easy for machines and difficult for humans, should be automated. We’re really focused on two areas for now. The first is the sales cycle which is long, usually 3-6 months to sell one event. It has high potential for automation. The second is the relationship with key decision makers which is largely transactional and predictable.

Where does one start when organising a (almost) fully automated conference? Is data manually imported to start the process?

First, we have a look at the human process as it is today. The usual first stage of the process is “production”. It starts with finding conference opportunities within current trending topics in a particular category. This is done by researching various different websites, including those from competitors resulting in a lot of effort into assessing if such a conference would be profitable. The production team then explores venues, potential speakers and the marketing gears then begin to turn. A brief is given to the marketing team which go on to generate leads for potential sponsors and delegates as well as activating a costly sales team.

Those leads are typically run through a cold outreach email marketing campaign (mostly) or through cold calls which is quickly becoming open to full automation. As potential delegates or sponsors are confirmed, they are sent out a registration form (mostly through email – manually) and they make a payment, either through cheque, bank transfer or online payment gateway. Our approach is more direct and simple. We call it the AlgoEvent way by Pronoia.io. The AlgoEvent tool creates a predictive conference calendar using data sourcing, analytics and an advanced algorithm to assess trending topics in tech (for now), a calendar of events with locations, a list of potential speakers, media partners, sponsors and delegates.

This data is then fed to an automated email and social outreach campaign for attendee and sales acquisition. The only human intervention in the process remains in the area of sales calls. Suppliers are also organised by the AlgoEvent tool ensuring smooth, automated logistic management and payment. Manually, the cycle time is about 5-6 months and also very inconsistent across the globe. This has huge ramification to the end result which we can now do at a click of a button.

Adding to the above question, from where did the AI’s algorithm gain its knowledge?
Were similar conferences studied for their overall performances?

Our proprietary algorithm is backed with data of the last 6 years of similar conference companies. Taking into account the number of tech conferences happening every single day across the globe, there are more than 300. The knowledge the model gains out of this is unbelievably huge.

The Blockchain Investment Roadshow in Cape Town will be an event of about 500-600 people. What is the limit to Pronoia’s abilities in organising such an event?

Our vision at pronoia.io is to do the same task more efficient with minimum human intervention. To be honest, there is no limit to the number of audience we can invite. In a couple of years, after we have trained our model enough, we can do close to 250-300 conferences in a year with an average of 400-500 delegates per conference with minimum human intervention. AI technologies are now present in almost every aspect of our lives.

What are your opinions on recent fear-mongering of AI in general?

AI is here to stay. Let’s take a case of Uber: did it take away jobs or did it create opportunity? In my view, the profile of jobs might change due to the of AI.

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