HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS THE NEW JOB MARKET

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LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

HOWARD TULLMAN JOINS LISA DENT ON WGN RADIO TO DISCUSS BRAND ISSUES

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE 

LISTEN TO THE SHOW HERE

All the Problems With Trump's TikTok Fee

All the Problems With Trump's TikTok Fee

The president floats the idea that the government should get a cut of any TikTok deal, which is just beyond belief.

By Howard Tullman

General managing partner, G2T3V and Chicago High Tech Investors @tullman

It’s actually difficult to believe that the President of the United States would inject himself (no pun intended) into the middle of the Microsoft/TikTok discussions, and then demand that a “substantial amount of money” be paid to the U.S. Treasury from whatever agreement might result, as a condition of the government’s acquiescence in any prospective deal.   

Trump’s lifelong mindset is that he and his businesses should get a “piece” of every deal, deservedly or not.  Now he’s dragging the federal government down to his grifter level. His sophomoric “key money” analogy to a landlord/tenant relationship is especially telling.  Throughout his shabby real estate career it was always about using leverage to take advantage of the other parties - renege on commitments - stiff vendors and partners - and basically do whatever was solely in his own interest. 

Say what you will about the lip service to security concerns, the clear message now is that you can buy anything you want from this government, for the right price. And to be very clear, if Trump even understood what he was saying, it’s pretty obvious that he wasn’t talking about traditional taxes, capital gains or even tariffs. He was talking about extorting the parties to the deal to pay the government a bunch of money so the deal would be allowed. The message is that federal approval is for sale-; just like everything else in this administration.  

Frankly, it was stupid of Microsoft to reach out to Trump and involve him in the process. Now the company, not to mention our country’s international image, is paying the price. The old rule is that if you teach a bear to dance, you'd better be prepared to keep dancing until the bear wants to stop. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella foolishly invited this guy to the party and now he won’t leave without his piece of the action.  

Although, in fact, we really don’t know who is supposed to actually come up with the payoff. While Trump insists that he would expect someone to pay the “very large percentage” of the purchase price to the United States Treasury, that’s about the extent of the thought that seems to have entered into this discussion thus far. As usual, it’s shoot from the hip, then try to back off the obvious errors and have your people attempt to clean up the confusion and the resulting mess. This is a helluva way to run a railroad.  

And for hundreds of other tech businesses engaged in global conversations, arrangements, contracts, partnerships, etc., it muddies the waters and raises new obstacles and problems galore. Trump’s declaration that TikTok has no rights in the U.S. unless he gives them is akin to telling the rest of the world it needs his permission to do business in the U.S. and that he can withdraw that consent at any time. This is no longer any rule of contract law, or standard business protocols - it’s a rule by fiat and by impulse and emotion. And no one really knows what the rules will be down the line.

   

Microsoft is theoretically buying the TikTok assets - not selling them - so is Trump saying that Microsoft also has to pay a premium over and above the payments to TikTok to the Treasury as a deal fee? Or is he saying that TikTok-; which isn’t technically subject to any U.S. jurisdiction from a financial standpoint - would have to pay some large portion of the purchase price to the Treasury for no apparent reason? And, just for laughs, who is going to determine these amounts and in what forum, and who will be negotiating with the parties? Will some government agency now be a part of every global contract conversation or - worse yet - waiting in the wings to jump in and interfere with the negotiations if and when it pleases?  Capitalism can’t operate this way; at least not for long.

For centuries, businesses have required and depended on certain degrees of trust, predictability, and comfort in the laws that govern contracts and other transactions - especially internationally.  That’s ever more so in today’s global economy. This latest farce is just another Trump nail in the coffin of America’s reputation and integrity. And it risks far more in the long term than simply the consummation of a single deal.  

New INC. Magazine Blog Post by Howard Tullman

It a Great Time to Start a Business -- In an Office

Costs are lower and opportunities greater. But you can't build a culture WFH.

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BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

Whether you're doing it by chance, happenstance or choice, now seems like an interesting and attractive time to start a new business. Many of the best tech businesses around today were started in tough and lean times, rather than in the rosy and flush days of the recent past. And, unless you're thinking about competing with the FAANG Five (or Microsoft), the barriers to entry into thousands of different markets for products and services have never been lower. 

 As for the prospects for success, that's a different question. The answer there is very much dependent on what talents and skills you have (or can hire) and what you're willing to commit in blood, sweat and tears to the effort.  But, make no mistake, it's never been cheaper or easier to try. Infrastructure is inexpensive and readily available. The cloud (AWS and Azure in particular) has made it possible to build your new business almost "by the bit" - renting virtually everything and bootstrapping your operation until it begins to scale.

 Importantly, significant early stage capital is almost irrelevant in this new world, where code and quickness are king. The old VC gatekeepers who controlled the dollars you previously needed to launch so many ventures, and their often foolish and insurmountable requirements and obstacles, no longer matter in the early startup stages. 

 In fact, raising too much money too soon at too modest a valuation can mortgage your own financial future and cap your upside in very painful ways. Substantial war chests are certainly nice to have, but the VC-skewed distribution waterfalls usually accompanying them - and which most entrepreneurs neither pay attention to nor frankly understand - are an expensive curse that keeps on taking for years to come. Distribution waterfalls often come as a complete surprise to the management team when payday finally arrives. So, in a sense, money's really no object at the outset. 

 As far as facilities and real estate go, the WFH (working from home) story is also pretty attractive. While it's difficult to see how Covid-19 virus did anyone any real favors - other than maybe helping us get rid of the worst President in history - the pandemic certainly accelerated the waves of digital transformation in major parts of our lives.  But it has legitimized and basically mandated levels of remote workforces which, while never really super successful in past experiments, are now absolutely an acceptable and long-term part of every business's strategy and future. WFH is here to stay. Having a largely virtual workforce and thereby eliminating the major fixed and relatively expensive costs of maintaining sizable physical offices looks like and, in fact, is a godsend to many established businesses. 

 But here's where things can get tricky: Working from home simply doesn't work if you're a startup. It's a seductive idea - and clearly a time and money saver. And also, the best and quickest way to kill your new enterprise. Every startup's success ultimately depends in large part on the entrepreneur's ability to attract and bring together diverse and talented people and to weave them into an effective and viable unit bound by a single compelling vision and a complementary culture which supports and powers the vision. You just can't get close at a distance.

 For a startup, as important as clever code and quickness clearly are, nothing is more important than effective interpersonal communication. And the culture of the company is the most essential thing to communicate. We communicate culture through stories, through confrontations and commentary, through rituals that help us translate and transmit otherwise awkward or uncomfortable emotions, and through the development of close individual relationships over time and through repeatedly shared experiences. Every successful startup has its history, war stories, and near-death experiences, which everyone is happy to share. These anecdotes bind the business together.

 The best startups develop a compelling culture with a single, and most critical, component: a powerful and contagious work ethic that infects (in a good way) not only the existing team, but every newbie who enters the environment as well. Consistently and continuously communicating the company's culture is the most important job of the founders and it's a non-stop and full-time job especially in the first few years. 

 It's really all about authentic passion.  Something that's missing in boring, painful and sterile Zoom calls, where you lose every drop of emotion and attachment in the process. Zoom fatigue is real and it's not just a matter of tired eyes and sore butts. We all sense that there's no real communication or connection between the participants, which is what is draining all the interest and energy away. You simply can't phone it in, no matter how good the technology. The best new companies make many things, but the most important product is a palpable and enthusiastic excitement that powers the team. That excitement, driven by tension, desire and fear, spurs performance and innovation.  

 Anyone who's ever been there and built an exciting business from scratch will tell you the same things: (1) there's an electricity to a winning startup that you sense the minute you step in the door. You can smell success; (2) there's a tension in the air that's driven by physical proximity, which can't be replicated elsewhere and that's shared by everyone in the company; and (3) there's an immediacy and serendipity enabled by unplanned and unstructured collisions of people and thoughts that generates the best ideas and solutions. 

 None of this energy and passion is present or even possible to communicate in any kind of effective manner in a multi-person, remote video conference. Zoom conferences simply suck all the life, all the juice, and, most importantly, all the spontaneity and give-and-take out of any call, conference, presentation, or webinar. There's no cure now or on the horizon for this sense-dulling, painful and dehumanizing technology because there's no way to replace, replicate or restore the emotional resonance that face-to-face communication creates and sustains. To be fair, it's not Zoom's fault. There's no substitute for being there and there never will be. 

 But it will be your fault, as the founder/CEO, if you're foolish enough to think that you can save money on an office/team space and still get your messages through and build the company's culture remotely or occasionally or with gig workers. It just doesn't work. When you're starting a new venture, everyone in the place needs to be in place. They're looking for immediate leadership and guidance, they need to see the vision being built out, to learn the path forward, and to see how you'll get them to the finish line. It's just not something you can schedule a few times a week or structure in advance. 

 The opportunity, the technology, the competition, and the customers' expectations and demands are all moving too quickly these days to have serious latency in your ability to react and respond in real-time. The world won't wait for Wednesday's call.  And, by the way, just because your coders and other techies have to commit their new code on a regular basis, and have it peer reviewed, doesn't mean that they get to operate in their own little vacuum either. Culture is a two-way street - output without input and direction is an easy way to lose your way. 

The early-stage risks to a new business by a failed or piecemeal attempt to infuse and embed a concrete culture are existential. It's great to have a clear view and an aspiration about your culture, but these things don't get built by themselves. If you get the culture wrong at the outset, you don't get a second chance. Culture isn't part of the game - it is the whole game. 

Work from home may be great for other folks, but it won't work for you.

New INC. Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman

Alexa, How Can We Stop Becoming Dehumanized?

We've all benefited from the wonders of smartphones, algorithms, and a gig economy that puts people at our disposal on an app's notice. But we seem to have stopped noticing the people.

By Howard Tullman

Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology

@tullman

It seems to me that we hear more tales all the time about the accelerating changes in social behavior and business etiquette brought about by the many ways that new disruptive technologies saturate our lives. Tech today is realistically unavoidable, critical to our livelihoods, shamefully extractive and obviously manipulative. And, of course, utterly addictive. We're all suckers for the stuff and all we ask in return is that it work smoothly most of the time. But we need to ask a lot more of these new tools and of ourselves because the long-term impact of the incremental, and seductive, changes they're making in our daily activities is beginning to undermine our mental and physical health and how we relate to each other. Vaping is killing kids, social is screwing up their psyches, product and service quality yields every day to convenience and comfort. Most of the systems and solutions, such as the state and federal regulatory agencies, that theoretically protected us in the past are broken or corrupted. You'd think that, if they were doing their jobs at all, we wouldn't have gas stations selling CBD snake oil and every kind of vaping device imaginable to all comers.

For all that these new platforms and programs were intended to help connect us, improve our access to knowledge, and bring us all closer; what we're seeing instead is nothing of the sort.  When Lady Gaga calls social media "the toilet of the Internet", she's not just talking trash; she's reflecting the realities of a tech-enabled medium that's largely out of our control. One whose unintended consequences are just now beginning to be understood.

 But social media is just one simple and relatively obvious symptom of the much broader set of concerns and changes we are facing. While many of these enhancements are quite compelling and relatively easy to incorporate into our activities; they are also very hard to abandon, restrict, or limit to their ideal use cases once they are launched and sent into the wild.

 We know that we're all captives today of a growing set of tools, networks and platforms (operated by a very few private entities) that are already largely beyond our power to fully control or regulate. The prospect and promise of tech augmentation - constantly enhanced and expanded capabilities in so many areas - is both exciting and frightening at the same time. Once you've seen the prospective freedoms of the future, your perspective and your attitudes are unalterably changed in many ways and there's no going back.  In addition, competitive (and increasingly) global business considerations, changes in market conditions and financial circumstances, and constantly increasing user and consumer expectations of bi-directional speed, immediate access and cost-effective solutions are accelerating many of these changes. If you want to stay and play in the game, you have no choice, but to try to keep up.

It's also human nature to fall in love with the functions and features of any new shiny thing and overlook the flaws, trade-offs, and failures that are always present as well. In our entrepreneurial and naïve enthusiasm for constant change, we foolishly and too often believe that, over time, everything gets better and that trees actually grow to the sky. The fact is that some of these emergent issues can get better and be dealt with in straightforward ways, but only if we recognize that they need to be addressed.

A simple everyday example: in inter-generational business meetings, we have a new protocol to protect our eager young team members from running afoul of their elders, one which requires us to explain to the old folks that the newbies often take their meeting notes on their phones instead of on the old foolscap paper legal pads we all used in our youths. If we don't explain this at the outset, the uninitiated will quickly conclude that the kids are checking their email and texts or updating their social profiles and news feeds instead of paying attention to the business at hand. It doesn't matter how diligent you're trying to be if the geezer sitting across from you thinks you're shopping, socializing or checking out sports results. This is more about clear explanation and communication than anything else, but it's amazing how often these kinds of confusing situations lead to unfortunate outcomes because we don't take the time to get things squared away at the outset. As we always say about hacking, it's happened in your business; it's just that you may not have realized or discovered it yet.

Also, it's clear that you can't start too soon. The growing adoption of voice as the principal interface for the command/control systems of the smart home and smart car has us growing more and more accustomed to no longer talking through machines to other people, but instead talking simply to the machines themselves. A new generation of children take Alexa and Siri inquiries and the "living" interactive devices in their homes for granted. The only open question you might ask their parents is whether they are teaching their kids to say "please" and "thank you" when they make their demands for songs, stories or other social interactions with these systems. If they aren't taught some basic courtesy when they're toddlers; they'll be absolute tyrants to their teachers by the time they get into school. We already know that their slightly older and inordinately entitled siblings demonstrably have only the most fleeting acquaintance with the concept of gratitude, so that boat may have already sailed. And, if we're not at least a little bit attentive and responsive to the next group coming down the pipe, they may turn out to be even worse.

But, to me, the harshest and most dehumanizing risk we face from technology is the resultant interpersonal disconnection. We're starting to regard workers in the gig economy - ride-sharing drivers most of all - as mere extensions of our phones or, worse yet, as drone drivers to be summoned as and when we wish. It's frightening how little person-to-person interaction is actually required to take an Uber or Lyft from place to place and honestly, but for the very modest and tiny drivers' images that appear on screen (mostly for liability reasons), there could just as easily be a trained chimp sitting in the front seat taking directional instructions from their own mobile device or - to hear tell in the near AV future - no one driving at all. Somehow, I keep hearing Springsteen singing about evolution in "Part Man, Part Monkey" in the background.

 So, here again, the choice is in our hands, but only if we extend ourselves and try to stem the powerful tech tide. It doesn't take much to make a difference and to help make a little daylight in someone's day - even for just a few moments - and to change a rote and robotic experience into a few shared minutes of connection. You don't have to decide to sit with the driver in the front seat or become his or her next best friend. You just need to invest a few minutes of conversation, make some eye contact, and offer a smile or two to change the nature of the whole experience.

 As our world gets bigger, broader and more automated-- canned and clickable suggested responses to texts and emails are my latest favorite examples-- we have to be extra careful to understand the value and importance of individual connections and conversations and how quickly and easily these new technologies can wash away the warmth and even the perceived worth of others we encounter daily.

The way we treat the people we barely know and may never see again will have a lot to do with the world we'll see in the future and whether it's a place we really want to be a part of. Even if you're super busy, multi-tasking, and frazzled -- and who isn't -- you can still invest a few moments to be "present" and to pay attention to the people you meet. Your time and attention are much more important than the amount of your tip.

New INC Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman

Are There I.T. Skeletons Lurking in Your Closet?

Technology is costly enough. But many companies are paying for software, cloud access and SaaS subscriptions they no longer use.

By Howard Tullman

Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology

@tullman

There isn't a CEO anywhere today who has a clue about what his or her company is actually spending on I.T. We're talking hardware, software licenses, SaaS services and the cloud--and this is true even before you consider the accelerating costs of qualified managerial and technical personnel. Most of them are afraid to ask or don't really even know who would have the answers if they did ask. This is a much bigger concern than anyone seems interested in admitting because there are so few suggestions and even fewer solutions available to address the problem. One lesson that's critical for startups is that you need to get a handle on all of this information from the beginning and before it gets entirely out of control.

Companies like Chicago's home-grown Flexera serve mainly big firms who are already stuck in the swamp, but its offerings are great guidelines and provide some important illustrations of the kinds of questions every business needs to be asking early on about their I.T. investments. Flexera grew out of a company started in a basement by two Northwestern University computer science students whose InstallShield product was officially launched in 1990. For anyone who grew up in tech, watching the InstallShield bar load your new program was just as common an experience as hearing the screechy static sounds from your 28.8 modem or the AOL "You've Got Mail" alert. Today the company's global with more than 1,300 employees and more than 51,000 customers.

Is cost monitoring the job of the CFO, the CTO, the CIO, various contract administrators, project consultants, outside vendors, or the accountants, bookkeepers and auditors? The answer is yes; and no, because software today is absolutely everywhere and everyone in the organization owns a piece of the puzzle and is part of the problem. Worse yet, there are so many holes in the accounting and auditing functions and so many indirect and obscure ways that money gets spent on this stuff that even the most conscientious comptrollers can't keep up with the outflows. And, just to be clear, none of the software sellers are likely to become Good Samaritans any time soon and tell you that you're still paying for seats and licenses for long-gone employees, for excess cloud storage, capacity and instances belonging to projects killed years ago, and for auto-renew subscriptions that may well outlast your business.

You'd think you'd need an authorization and maybe a P.O. to buy a lot of these apps, programs, services, storage plans, and subscriptions, but you can find millions of dollars of these kinds of charges at large and small companies buried in expense accounts, bundled into other purchases of equipment and hard goods, and otherwise hidden in unmanaged and unsupervised disbursements. On a monthly basis, in most cases, these kinds of charges often fall below the minimum review and documentation thresholds-- just like all those "urgent" Uber and Lyft trips. And so they slip regularly right under the wire. In other cases, no one wants to ask the tough questions because the answers are both unpleasant and expensive.

Software in particular is an increasingly important part of our lives and our businesses. It's as essential as electricity and just as ubiquitous, but, because it's largely virtual rather than physical and because it operates mainly in the background, it's far more difficult to track and measure usage, seats, licenses, costs, etc. By comparison, we have plenty of meters to measure our power consumption and nice Nest thermostats and other systems to try to manage and control our HVAC costs.  And we know (or at least we should) how many widgets or wagons we bought this week.  But the only time we really pay attention to our software, equipment and infrastructure, and the systems that run our businesses is when they stop running. Basically, in most cases we're paying whatever we're asked to pay because we're not really buying services as much as we're buying peace and insurance. No one wants to be the guy who tried to save a few shekels and had the system shut down during rush hour.

I'm convinced that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is going to require radical revision any day now because power, software and the connectivity they enable are no less critical to our lives and our business operations than oxygen is to our bodies. And we know the moment they're missing because we hear about it from everyone and their brother - inside the business and outside as well. No one really appreciates the fact that our day-to-day operations hang on such a thin thread until the screens go dark or the cloud bursts and won't respond. I've said before that SaaS services are a very mixed blessing and the cloud, if anything, is actually worse, because we have even less of an idea of just how much and how often our people are using these resources, how dependent they've become upon them, and exactly what we are spending every day.

But there are some helpful solutions out there. I wrote a while ago about Knowledge Hound, which helps companies track and find materials, prior projects, and other resources that they have somewhere in house but have lost track of, in order to avoid paying unnecessarily for re-dos, redundant research or other wasted effort We're also seeing new entrants like Ocient addressing the need to have better analytical tools to help us intelligently manage the overwhelming flow and size of today's largest datasets, so we can turn the data glut back into good and useful information. In the specific area of I.T. tracking, the best solution I've seen lately is Flexera, which helps companies of every size get a handle on their hardware, understand their ongoing operations and exposures, and then figure out what needs to be done to rationalize and ultimately optimize the whole messy I.T. sprawl. Think of their overall offering as a virtual software utility meter.

Flexera's software and systems let you see what you have (discovery), figure out what you need (inventory) and then use that information and those insights to take appropriate action to control your spend. There seem to be some quick saves and some pretty low-hanging fruit (since most companies have someone with a red stapler and last year's Excel spreadsheet trying to keep track of this stuff) and then there are the more interesting and challenging issues. As I noted above, the controls are so porous in most businesses and the reporting is so delayed and incomplete that Flexera has determined that the only way to get ahead of the curve is by adopting, implementing and enforcing governance rules and algorithmic programs that provide real-time measurement and guard rails and prevent run-away (and often inadvertent) expenditures from blowing up your budgets. No one likes to talk about how badly their best customers businesses used to be run, but based on conversations with a few of their happy customers, it's clear that the implemented saves and catches make a demonstrable net difference in no time at all for their bottom lines.

In addition, it's pretty clear that most businesses have no idea of what their actual rights, secondary uses and other entitlements and permissions are under the I.T. contracts that they have signed. Certainly no one in senior management has any idea about any of this. And so, another critical function that Flexera brings to the process is that their teams have actually read and evaluated these torturous tomes (and all the T's & C's) and built programs to help the end users make sense out of them and to ensure they secure all the benefits and value they've paid for. If you don't know your rights, you can't do much about insisting on and enforcing them. Needless to say, while it's a little awkward to tell your clients how much they've been wasting, these contract review procedures also quickly pay for themselves.

And finally, Flexera seems to be the only one-stop shop that I've come across in a world where you need to be on top of everything at the same time. The range, scope and sprawl has never been greater - desktops, laptops, phones, data centers, SaaS services and the cloud are all now part of the equation. Certainly, there may be smaller players with piecemeal offerings. The problem is that, if you aren't working with someone who can help you visualize the entire I.T. forest as well as all of the trees, you're going to be coming up with partial solutions and trying to put out the most pressing fires without addressing the long term needs of your business and the best ways to meet them.

The bottom line is simple. If you can't see and scope all this stuff, there's no way you can manage and control it. As they say at my favorite burger joint, Steak 'n Shake, "In Sight It Must be Right".

PUBLISHED ON: APR 23, 2019

New INC Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman

In the New Ball Game: Two Strikes and You're Out

Baseball loves to live in the past, refusing to make changes while its core audience ages. In business today, changing quickly and boldly is an absolute imperative.

By Howard Tullman

Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology

@tullman

They keep talking about ideas, such as a pitch clock, designed to speed up the pace of baseball games, which right now are a lot like watching paint dry -­- albeit even less colorful. I expect a few more years will pass before anything major happens in the majors although the leading sports teams have finally realized that encouraging cellphone use and engagement in the ballparks and arenas is smarter than trying to restrict it or blocking WiFi access. 

Side-by-side, real time commentary and even mobile only video replays enhance and improve the fans' experience and engagement. As sports betting continues along the path toward complete legalization (right behind pot), fans' phones will become an even more central part of the in-venue activities. And, of course, e-sports are exploding across the world with attractive demographics that couldn't be more appealing to the old white guys who continue to dominate the ownership of the country's sports teams. According to Nielsen, more than half of baseball fans are over 55 and the average fan age is around 53 as compared with the NFL average age of 47 and the NBA's 37. You can expect to see prunes at the concession stands pretty soon instead of pretzels. 

Finally, a little-known fact, but a critical commercial consideration, is that in the course of the season, there are on average four times the number of butts in the good seats than the actual number of season ticket holders.  The only consistently effective way to identify those folks (guests, season sharers, scalpers, etc.) is to grab their email addresses or cellphone numbers. Now, especially, when the competition for attention is so fierce, "knowing all our customers" couldn't be more critical. These folks are unlikely to download a bunch of different team apps - the incentives aren't great and the screen clutter on everyone's phone just keeps growing so, for one-to-one communications, direct phone texts are the best in-venue bet. But overall, don't look for the baseball experience to get much better anytime soon. 

Meantime, in the rest of the world, we're already seeing a big change in the strike count. Today, for most businesses, it's two strikes and you're out. You get one chance to learn. Strike one. And you get one chance following that lesson to make some quick course corrections. If you don't react, respond, and rapidly change-- strike two, you're out. No one has the luxury of time any longer and you can't wait for your people to eventually wake up and smell the coffee. They need to get started right now. Instilling a sense of urgency, showing them a path to success, and providing them with the tools and resources needed to get the necessary work done is your most important job. 

But just talking about change without taking concrete actions is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. It gives you a temporary warm feeling, but no one else (hopefully) notices. Spoiler alert - forget the preceding passage if you haven't already seen the new version of A Star is Born. Talking about the same old stuff is also a formula for failure. The past prescriptions won't provide rapid or certain relief any longer and certainly not the promised and expected results of the past. Staying the course, sticking to your knitting, and doing things the way you always have are just as likely to be problematic strategies these days as productive ones.  

You can't hide from the future, you can't afford to stand still, and you can't save your way to success. Gains secured by cost-cutting are short term salves at best and more likely to further set you back than to be a means of setting you up for the future. Growing your way out of your problems and fundamentally transforming your organization into a digital-first juggernaut are the only viable paths forward. Clinging to the past is a pyrrhic prescription for constant pain, growing confusion, and eventual extinction. Learn from the past, but don't live there.

The very traditions that previously provided comfort, consistency, and assured-if-modest results are now at best excuses to resist inevitable change. Too many companies are working hard to catch up with their "glory days" rather than focusing on what's ahead. 

You can't evolve your way into radical change. It's not a continuous or comfortable process. Radical change demands a series of abrupt actions, hard decisions, wrenching personnel changes, and painful compromises, which may or may not eventually get you to where you hope you're headed. You've got to make the critical changes happen because nothing very good ever happens by itself. And, at least if you're taking action and happening to the world (as Springsteen says) instead of letting the world hit you over the head, you're likely to still be in the boat and in the race when the distant shore finally appears. 

This trip will not be short or obvious or easy- there will be sacrifices galore--but then again, there's not much of a choice or an option if you want your business to thrive,  and not just barely survive. 

New INC Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman

GETTING REAL ABOUT AUGMENTED

REALITY 

I’m always amazed at how people you’d naturally assume were reasonably intelligent, somewhat experienced, and fairly mature can talk themselves into believing that hope is an effective strategy and that wishes regularly do come true. The staggering advances we’ve seen in technology over the last two decades could make a believer out of almost anyone, but take it from me, the “field of dreams” is still a fantasy which makes for a mighty good movie, but a lousy and costly) business plan.

You can build it, but there’s no guarantee that anyone will come and, even if they do, that they’ll be willing and able to pay for more than the privilege of your presence. No one likes to end up alone, but, at the very least, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re with someone you dearly love. It’s lonely at the top (even if it’s a garbage heap), but at least it’s not crowded. Maybe that’s some small solace. The principal point is that patience these days is at a premium and investors are less and less willing to wait for miracles. (See https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/no-dont-need-your-pointless-app.html.) Talking a good game isn’t going to get it done in an era where real results and solid tech are basically the starting points.

But when those far-out dreams do occasionally come true (or at least start to offer a real glimmer of hope for a future), it’s a thing of beauty to behold. Personally, I’ve been waiting for years for Magic Leap’s mixed reality technology to cross the chasm and get “real” (no pun intended) and in the latest demonstrations in my office where you can’t fake a video or gin up a prototype that will never make it into production, I have to report that I’m impressed and think things may be finally getting there.

For me, any kind of broad adoption and implementation of augmented reality and mixed reality tools (as opposed to virtual reality products which I think may never get there) has always been about three primary considerations.

First, the system must have a very modest learning curve, simple controls, and minimal requirements and expectations for any material changes in the day-to-day behavior of the prospective users. The closer the new solutions remain to the ways in which business has traditionally been conducted; the more likely that there will be a rapid adoption and, most importantly, this permits an ongoing peer-to-peer education and instruction process  which is essential to broad exposure and success. It’s impossible to boil the ocean and train the whole world and so new systems need to promote, encourage and reward early adopters and influencers to spread the word. In a way, it’s actually in their own interest as well because, not only do they get serious bragging rights, but also – as with all new technologies – the more users, the more powerful the network and the greater the benefits for all. This is Metcalfe’s Law in practice. No one ever wanted to own the only telephone or fax machine in town.  (See  https://www.inc.com/howard-tullman/future-of-content-marketing-simplereach.html?cid=search.) The Magic Leap system and the handheld controller it employs took just a couple of minutes to learn and then even novice users were set to go. Far easier to use than the controls on the entertainment systems of any plane these days. Setting up the operating environment by “painting” the space took another minute or two and was roughly as challenging as moving your head around to teach your iPhone to use facial recognition.

Second, the new equipment has to be lightweight, non-invasive, and, above all, connected to markers and reference points in the real world. This last recognition may be the genius of mixed reality. In business uses, we don’t have the slightest interest in being “taken away” or dropped in some new virtual world. Maybe it works for seated gamers, but for the rest of us looking for helpful tools; it’s disruptive, foreign, hard to navigate and usually a little nauseating as well. Strapping on heavy duty googles and stumbling around the room like an idiot isn’t fun or especially instructive and it’s likely that this is the primary reason that Facebook quickly closed hundreds of Oculus Rift demo booths in Best Buy stores when it became clear that virtually no one was interested in the virtual experience. The Magic Leap headset (which will undoubtedly get even lighter and smaller as time progresses) are roughly the same as typical swim googles and just about as light and you can see the room you’re in at all times so you’re never “lost” or uncomfortable. Starting from a solid ground, you can quickly enter the environment and build your new world.

Third, the metaphors within the application itself have to be common, readily understood, and consistent with typical behaviors so that new users are not challenged, confused or threatened. Too many systems today adopt a layering strategy which requires either prior knowledge or extensive exploration in order to find essential components and tools. The charm of the basic Magic Leap application was that there was a simple resource bookcase with shelves that you can simply scroll up and down and, on each shelf, were located various objects that you could select and drag into your room and then employ in different ways.

Whether you were constructing structures, empowering or activating objects, or performing other simple operations like moving around the 3-dimensional space, two things were readily apparent – it was impossible to get lost in the process and there were no unrecoverable errors. Both of these attributes are invaluable for beginners and created an overall context in which trial, exploration and experimentation were encouraged without any penalties associated with mistakes or inadequate preparation or training.

Bottom line: a stimulating and exciting step forward for explorers and learners of any and every age. A dream come true.

New INC Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman

Don't Make Me Repeat The Password Lecture Again

In a world where we're reliant on third party WiFi, we all need to do a better job at protecting our data. The penalty for not being vigilant is growing every minute.

By Howard Tullman

Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology @tullman

Any entrepreneur or road warrior hears some new horror tale about hacks, scams and identity thefts just about every other week. Interestingly enough, these are usually fairly-credible, peer-to-peer conversations rather than media scare stories. Most recently, I've heard half a dozen versions of complaints and some serious instances of financial losses based on the porous and insecure nature of hotel and airport WiFi.  In fairness, these providers couldn't make it any clearer or disclose the risks more directly on their websites-- these are not the usual disclaimers buried in the T&Cs.  Unfortunately, we don't really have much in the way of connectivity choices when we're on the road. You can carry your own hotspot or use your phone and run down your battery, but the vast majority of us aren't gonna do that. So, the trick is to figure out what you can do, realistically and practically, to protect yourself.

As we're forced to rely more and more on third-party-provided WiFi, and it becomes increasingly ubiquitous, the scale of the security problems and the prospective losses are only going to continue to grow. And honestly, as long as it's not happening to a family member or a relative, we've gotten so accustomed to these commonplace tales of woe (and worse) we tend to dismiss them as the risks of the road. In addition, I have to admit that we stupidly assume (and often think smugly to ourselves) that the victims must have been lazy, sloppy or careless and that this kind of stuff could never happen to us. Until it does; and then, of course, it's too late.

My humble suggestion is that now's the time to start thinking about how to be smart about the situation before you have to be sorry. My thought is simple: if you can't control the pipes, try to control and protect your passwords. Yes, I know that you've heard this lecture a million times before and yet most of us are too "busy," too lazy, or too uninformed to actually invest the modest amount of time that it takes to substantially boost the odds in your favor. In this context, I'd say that being too busy is, in fact, just another word for being lazy. There's not much I can do to help anyone unwilling to help themselves.

It would take about an hour to follow a few basic steps to improve your password protection while it can take weeks to repair and try to restore your credit and financial identity if you get hacked. You should take the time to do the math. And, for now, I'm just going to focus on the facts of life these days and then you can decide how to proceed.

First, the guys on the other side are getting smarter, faster and a lot nastier. They're growing in numbers, the hacks are easier to accomplish, and they're better equipped-- especially because the tech and capital requirements to take your money are trivial. In addition, ploys and scams are spreading and being shared across markets and even countries at a very rapid rate because of the increased communications and connections across the dark web.

 Second, we suckers continue to make it easier and easier for the bad guys to break in. The most frequently used password today is still "123456". Fifth on the list is "111111" and No. 8 is "password."  It takes most brute-force hacking programs less than a few seconds according to a recent survey to figure out any password of 6 characters or less and more than 40% of all passwords today are 6 characters or less.  Other very popular passwords are equally infantile including: "qwerty" and "123123".  And more than half of us use the exact same password on multiple sites so once the hackers are in, they can move quickly from site to site.

And finally, the middlemen (hosting services, connectivity providers, social platforms, etc.) aren't doing jack to help us help ourselves by requiring us to be smart about our personal security. They don't care if you get ripped off as long as you can always get right back on their service or network with the least possible friction and in the shortest amount of time. Every six months, some of these services make you change your password, but they don't insist upon or enforce even the most basic complexity requirements.

What should you do?

The best and smartest thing to do is to use a password manager/vault, a single location for all your passwords that requires only remembering one password--hopefully one with a minimum 8 characters with a number, letter, capital letter and a symbol as part of it. There are several players in the space, but Keeper Security (keepersecurity.com) has one of the biggest user bases and is the best for my money because it provides both individual and enterprise-level solutions. More importantly, Keeper Security employs a zero-knowledge approach, which means that the site has no idea what's in your vault or any ability to get at it. You spend less than an hour and build an Excel spreadsheet with all your stuff (which you probably already have) and then it's imported into your Keeper vault and the next time you visit one of your regular sites, the Keeper system will automatically supply the appropriate sign-in data.

The next best thing to do is to bite the bullet and adopt two-factor authentication (2FA), which I admit can be a pain in the butt on a plane or if you're not connected somehow, but otherwise it's as easy as pie. This is another simple way to deploy an additional layer of protection and just requires that you take an extra minute to enter a security code sent to your phone to confirm that it's actually you trying to get into your site. For sure, this is an essential fix for your primary social media sites because they are the connectors and links to many other sites where you used Facebook Connect or something similar for Twitter to sign into a bunch of third-party sites.  Biometric security such as facial recognition and fingerprint readers, which are also 2FA, are becoming more prevalent, too, but that's a subject for a future column.

Right now, a password vault and a 2FA are quantum leaps in de-risking your online exposures and a very small price to pay (in terms of time and treasure) to avoid major headaches. And, if you're like everyone else and somewhat intimidated by the length of your password list (or never heard of Excel), at least work on the top five sites you visit all the time and get those fixed and protected. It's a 99/1 world in terms of anyone's web activity (we go to the same, very few, places almost all of the time) so, if you at least pay attention to the most important sites, you've got a fighting chance of dodging a bullet.  But the smart money is still on the hackers and it's not really a question of "if", it's just a question for most of us of "when". I'd rather be safe than sorry.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

PUBLISHED ON: JUN 12, 2018