Commodities, agriculture and perilous times ahead

Jim Rogers analyzes the artificial situation in the world economy, criticizes the central banks for mass money printing and warns that this is going to end very bad. In this video the successful investor also explains the demographics and the need for new farmers, opportunities in agriculture since inventories are in historic lows, because the world has consumed more than produced and "that has led in terrible distortions".  

The entrepreneur Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren was born in the Bronx, New York City in 1939. He studied Business Science in Baruch College in Manhattan for 2 years, and got married in 1964 his wife Ricky Anne. He started his career as a retail salesman. With a loan of $50.000 developed his own line of neckties under the name "Polo" in 1967, selling them in large department stores. 

He saw his business grow to a $10 billion empire. Lauren has undoubtedly a keen business sense, and is known for his confidence, the ability to stand by his own product at all costs, and the ability to prevail, despite several difficulties. His style and sophistication is present not only in his cloth lining but also in his personal life. 

Lauren has created an amazingly successful career and very rarely gives interviews. Oprah had the opportunity to sit with Ralph Lauren at Double RL ranch in Telluride, Colorado for a full interview after more than 20 years.

Video of the Week: Joseph Nye explains the term "Soft Power"

I met Joseph Nye around five years ago, when he first published his popular book "The powers to lead". In 2011 Nye was named by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers, among many other distinctions. His theories made me understand much better foreign policy indeed, and in this video Nye explains with his own words his own term "Soft Power"  

The changing role of the CIO

More than twelve years ago, I had my first meetings with CIO’s in leading organizations and businesses. I can remember at that time the vast majority had a rich technical background, sometimes with little or no knowledge of the commercial business, so frustrated from multiple tasks such as software development and ad hoc integration to resolve, that looked to me very often as a hot boiler ready to explode. The pressure resolving technical issues was monumental. Of course management couldn't ever understand the cause of frustration. Let the CIO worry about technology.

The CIO’s role was always there: Checking out new trends in technologies, making decisions on key hardware and software purchases, deciding which are worth implementing and which should be ignored. Their role was defined by the dominant technology and the IT strategy as much as by their own expertise and talent in the field.

Today it is hard to even imagine a mid or a large company without a CIO who is monitoring the situation. And his image is changed too. The CIO looks more social, collaborative, business looking and the multi skilled function is shifting the dynamics to the modern day executive table. The CIO role has become so necessary, so counted upon that they spend most of their time in the tactical execution of a task or a project at a time.

The IT sector is driven by Cloud-delivered services including both software and data. As an increasing share of the new IT expenditure is going to such services, the CIO of today balances the business needs against the stream of opportunities and risks.

Software installation and maintenance will soon be or is already replaced by systems availability, responsiveness, information security and compliance. The CIO needs to be more strategic and have a clear idea of how a current technology can increase the company’s sales and not just how to reduce costs or to improve productivity.

The CIO is also facing changing priorities, smaller budgets and the lack of internal skills. As Information Technology and technologies it supports have become more complex, the role of the CIO has become also increasingly complex. There is a clear need for integration with the marketing team, and a direct line with the CEO. The CIO’s role should continue to grow not only in influence, but with a vision for the organization, to drive organizational change and enforce corporate performance in brand new ways.

But even today the communication between IT and Business can suffer. There is a need to gap the bridge in between, making sure that both sections of the organization collaborate efficiently and effectively in order to meet corporate goals. And this is the ultimate challenge for the years ahead.

Video of the Week: Why I chose a gun

Economists very often bypass or take for granted the role of National and International Defense for the sake of economic stability and prosperity. The proof is that someone has to search a little bit deeper in order to get the full picture. In this video Peter van Uhm, the Netherlands Chief of Defense is sharing his personal story and he explains why we need armies if we want peace, in a rather unusual presentation.

Five Future Trends for Information Technology

Businesses are driven by the need for optimization and cost reduction as the first and immediate response from the economic meltdown. The ongoing economic crisis is originated from the highly-income world as represented by most of the OECD economies. The crisis today is far larger in shape and depth.

The scale of this present situation has a serious impact in operational and Information Technology (IT) budgets and in any case IT is not immune and is suffering from both the supply and demand side.  At the same time for being competitive as a business or as a country is considered for granted to be a top performer in new technologies, because technology is providing among the strongest competitive advantages against any competition. Under these dramatic circumstances how the economy of the future will look like is the real question.

Currently the situation has no room for major investments ready to be seen in the short run, never mind a few exemptions. Most IT departments suffer conservative cost reductions and the slow recovery as major analysts claim will last for many years. The future of the IT seems rather different in any case, from what we used to know by now. The forced retrenchment of the recession though gives the chance to business leaders and decision makers to reassess and reinvest in new growth areas.

Key areas in IT that will shape the leading sectors of the near future are the following:

1.   IT Architecture: It is common sense that businesses need to expand or enforce their international presence with whatever that means to their IT architecture design and infrastructure. Viewing everything through applications will soon come to an end. An IT Architecture project means to undertake hundreds of high level detailed tasks, including justifying changes, identifying data and security requirements, to further reduce complexity, to consolidate and centralize technology resources, to improve efficiency by restructuring enterprise resources. It means also that a server-centric topology will evolve to a service-centric topology, decoupling systems, data, infrastructures and business processes from one another.   

2.   User Experience: The clear expectations creating a positive User Experience (UE) environment can be overwhelmingly complex with many issues. These issues can involve usability, interaction design, brand identity techniques, industry specific strategies and requirements. In order to achieve high levels of user experience you need to clearly distinguish UE from the User Interface (UI) even if UI is a critical element of the user experience design. You need to encompass all elements of user interaction including, the organization, the customers, the products and the services.  

3.   Social Platforms: Company websites may no longer be the first point of contact for customers. IT is affected by a great manner from the way organizations conduct business. Isolated information will ultimately die, since social platforms evolve as a new source of business intelligence.  The benefits to a successful social brand are significant, and there are already known cases of businesses that successfully revitalized their image. Brands with relatively small budgets can achieve brand awareness, but they need to focus their resources, time and attention in a larger scale, in order to attract new customers. On which platforms to be, is a crucial question in any case. Social Platforms can also become for your business a place where you can provide advantages to your customers such as a loyalty card within a  mobile rewards game, the ability to do very tight targeting that combines gamification techniques that might include criteria such as geographic location, time of day, recommendations etc.

4.   Cyber Intelligence: Top Information security trends and vulnerability warnings will continue to shape and drive Information Technology, with hacktivism across the globe, a trend that started some time ago. Mainstream Cloud and Mobile adoption will engage security concerns that will become a more practical discussion in the near future. Executives are trying to take advantage of the productivity upside that new technology is capable to offer, with trends such as Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), thus creating a new security concern that must be under the radar. DDoS attacks against organizations that we have seen in the past, presages a future of blind full scale attacks to any intervening service provider. Other threats and vulnerability warnings combine, malware, sandboxing smart phone applications, cross platforms attacks, QR codes targeting, and digital wallets that will become a cyber crime target that will draw attackers’ interest.

5.   Data Privacy: This is already huge issue for international organizations which they are undertaking incisive analysis of important legal issues from a global perspective. Data processing at a company level, International data transfers, and technology issues related to privacy, conflicts between US privacy rules and European data protection law will become a much more serious concern. In a scale of a country, governmental surveillance technology issues related to privacy will be addressed more thoroughly in the near future.  

Video of the Week: Davos 2013 Unemployment or Unemployable?

While the clock is ticking, European unemployment breaks dangerously the one record after the other. I recently revisited this panel discussion from Davos 2013 Open Forum that I highly recommend to watch or listen to and draw your own conclusions in conjunction with innovations, structural problems and economic policies that shape the current situation.

A living legend

There are some people that I have met in person and admire in some degree, but one figure that always had tremendous impact on me is definitely the imposing Cretan Minos Zombanakis. Minos achieved the status of a true legend in the global banking scene, but that was not enough to catch my full attention. Minos Zombanakis among many other achievements, is the father of Libor in the financial community. I asked myself if it is possible for a banker to despise ill-gotten wealth in an era when morals and good manners are nonexistent. Is it possible for a man to be human and genuine in our days, when people cannot even communicate, because the monitors they stare at all day and night have made interaction impossible? My answer in these two questions is definitely yes.

His personal story is indeed an amazing adventure. Minos was born in 1926 in a small village called Kalives and he grew up in a 2nd world war Greece, and back then life in Crete was hard even for a living. The only Greek territory remaining free by May 1941 was the large and strategically important island of Crete which was held by a strong allied garrison. Crete was of course a strategic area, close to North Africa so it was a matter of time to become a bloody battleground.  Conditions in Athens were very bad too. That was a very tough starting point, for one man’s life through war, violence and hunger in the streets. Even though Minos was a young schoolboy, through his books and insightful observations managed to make his way out and see the big picture too early. In a world out of control, he had his own plans for the future. During war, the Governor of the Bank of Greece followed the Greek Government into exile.

In 1948 the Marshall plan (officially the European Recovery Plan) got into full swing in Greece, headed by Paul Porter. Minos had already gained experience participating in high level discussions between the US and Greek governments and he became an assistant Executive Director in the Bank of Greece, managing foreign exchange reserves and battling inflation in these desperate times.

But further studies were needed for someone who wanted to make a difference in his field. Back then in Kalives, Minos met a man who came back from Cambridge in the United States to his village in Crete. This man told Minos with pride that he was a waiter at Harvard – in the days when servants polished the students’ shoes, and urged Minos to consider himself as a Harvard boy.

Minos made his way to the United States; he went at the Harvard gates in order to challenge his own strengths, soon to realize how different life was in the US at that time. But there was a slight problem when he arrived. He could not be accepted because he didn't had a degree. After this huge disappointment a friend advised him to insist as much as possible and audit a few courses. After tremendous effort from the side of Minos, he was accepted to just audit the courses. But Minos was enthusiastic, smart and a fast learner, catching the attention of his professors. The board allowed him to give the exams, where he excelled. After this important step and the support of Dean Mason he was fully enrolled, able to sit for a Masters Degree at the age of 30, one of the youngest in class. After completing his studies at Harvard he went to New York to work for a Greek ship owner.

His journey to the global markets took off from that point. Through the markets of Europe, United States, Middle East and Japan Minos literally changed the financial markets with his innovations. As David Lascelles beautifully presents in his book, Minos opened up a whole new era in international finance, without even being a product of the dominant Anglo-Saxon financial establishment, or even of the new wave of Central European Jewish bankers.

A few years ago, the first time I met Minos I was in a personal turning point, a period of a great challenge in my life. I can remember I was so stressful, I thought I lost my nerve forever.  A difficult period of time that maybe many of us went through at some point in our life.  When I saw his tall figure, I thought I knew him forever. I instantly understood that he is a warm person, his mind is enormously sharp, an intellectually curious man that you know you can’t go wrong when you seek for the right advice at the right time. 

I have learned an important lesson from Minos Zombanakis. Never give in. Never give up, because life is a constant challenge. Maybe there will be many setbacks along the way. Dare to move forward. Don’t be late – don’t postpone. Don’t be afraid to challenge your quiet life. In times of great challenge, when the chips are down, a joyful voice is always coming deep inside from my head. I know this familiar voice. It is Minos.