Pressure on incomes looks set to continue, with pay rises forecast at 1% over the next year, a survey predicts.
Despite falling unemployment, wage growth is weak because the supply of labour has also gone up, says the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD).
The CIPD said for every low-skilled job, there were 24 applicants.
There were also 19 candidates for every medium-skilled job and eight for every high-skilled vacancy.
The CIPD’s quarterly Labour Market Survey of employers, carried out in association with the Adecco Group, said the workforce had been boosted by more workers from other EU countries, as well as by older workers and former welfare claimants.
Pay rises ‘modest’
The report’s author, Gerwyn Davies, who is senior labour market adviser at the CIPD, said pay had been expected to rise along with employment, but such predictions were “the dog that hasn’t barked for some time now”.
“We are still yet to see tangible signs of this situation changing in the near term,” he added.
“The facts remain that productivity levels are stagnant [and] public sector pay increases remain modest, while wage costs and uncertainty over access to the EU market have increased for some employers.
“At the same time, it is also clear that the majority of employers have still been able to find suitable candidates to employ at current wage rates, due to a strong labour supply until now.”
Not all recent surveys back up the CIPD’s view. Last week, a survey of employment agencies found that the UK labour market was tightening, with employers finding it harder to recruit staff.
The survey, carried out by market research firm Markit for the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC), said that pay rates for both permanent and temporary staff were rising quickly because of a continuing fall in the number of job applicants.
Markit said last year’s Brexit vote was also driving some EU nationals home, making it harder to fill a wide variety of jobs.
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Ian Narev was facing calls to step down
The head of Australia’s Commonwealth Bank will step down by the middle of next year, the firm said.
Chief Executive Ian Narev will retire after six years at the helm of Australia’s biggest mortgage lender.
It comes amid pressure from regulators over 53,700 alleged breaches of anti-money laundering laws.
The board said it brought forward details of its succession plans to end speculation over his tenure.
Mr Narev had faced calls to step down after the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) launched a civil action against the bank over what it described as “serious and systemic” breaches of anti-money laundering laws.
The bank’s chairman Catherine Livingstone said in a statement on Monday the Mr Narev will leave the bank by the end of the 2018 financial year.
The bank’s board also recently scrapped short-term bonuses for all senior executives this year in response to the allegations.
Deposit machines to blame
Most of the alleged breaches related to the bank’s deposit machines, which could accept up to $20,000 Australian dollars (£12,160; $15,820) in cash at a time, anonymously if the person depositing was not a Commonwealth customer.
The bank failed to meet deadlines for reporting transactions over the legal threshold of A$10,000, according to Austrac.
Commonwealth bank said the breaches were due to a coding error, which meant the machines failed to automatically report the transactions.
More investigations
Australia’s corporate regulator last week said it would open a separate investigation into the bank’s handling of money laundering suspicions.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission said it would look at whether the bank’s board complied with its obligations to tell shareholders about all potential liabilities.
Despite its ongoing legal tussles, the bank last week beat forecasts to post profits of A$9.88bn (£6bn; $7.8bn)
Profits were 4.6% higher than last year’s results and the eighth straight year of record profits for the bank.
“No, I’m just looking.” Words most of us have said when approached politely by a sales assistant while browsing in a shop. Most of us will not have then experienced the sales assistant snarling: “Then ‘op it, mate!”
Hearing those words in a London shop made quite an impression on Harry Gordon Selfridge.
The year was 1888, and the flamboyant American was touring the great department stores of Europe – in Vienna, Berlin, the famous Bon Marche in Paris and then Manchester and London – to see what tips he could pick up for his then-employer, Chicago’s Marshall Field.
Field popularised the phrase “the customer is always right”. Evidently, not yet the case in England.
Two decades later, Selfridge was back in London, opening his eponymous department store on Oxford Street – now a global destination for retail, then an unfashionable backwater, but handily near a station on a newly opened Tube line.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Selfridges – pictured on its opening day, 15 March 1909 – became renowned for sumptuous window displays
Selfridges caused a sensation, partly due to its sheer size: the retail space covered six acres (24,000 sq m).
Attitude
Selfridge also installed the largest glass windows in the world – and created, behind them, the most sumptuous shop displays.
But more than scale, what set Selfridges apart was attitude.
Harry Gordon Selfridge introduced a whole new shopping experience, one honed in the department stores of late-19th Century America.
As he had in Chicago, Selfridge swept away the previous custom of stashing merchandise behind locked glass doors in cabinets, or high up on unreachable shelves.
Instead, he laid out the open aisle displays we now take for granted, where you can touch a product, pick it up, and inspect it from all angles, without a salesperson hovering by your side.
In the full-page newspaper adverts he took out when his store opened, Selfridge compared the “pleasures of shopping” to those of “sightseeing”.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Harry Gordon Selfridge revolutionised the shopping experience
Shopping had long been bound up with social display.
The old arcades of the great European cities, displaying their fine cotton fashions – gorgeously lit with candles and mirrors – were places for the upper classes not only to see, but to be seen.
Selfridge had no truck with snobbery or exclusivity. His adverts pointedly welcomed the “whole British public”: “No cards of admission are required.”
‘The bottom of the pyramid’
Management consultants nowadays talk about the fortune to be found at the “bottom of the pyramid” – Selfridge was way ahead of them. In his Chicago store, he appealed to the working classes by dreaming up the concept of the “bargain basement”.
Selfridge did perhaps more than anyone to invent shopping as we know it. But the ideas were in the air.
Another trailblazer was an Irish immigrant named Alexander Turney Stewart. Stewart introduced New Yorkers to the shocking concept of not hassling customers the moment they walked through the door, a novel policy he called “free entrance”.
Image copyright Alamy
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Alexander T Stewart set his prices low, hoping to make profits from high volumes of sales
AT Stewart and Co was among the first stores to practise the now-ubiquitous “clearance sale”, periodically moving on old stock at knockdown prices to make room for new.
Stewart also offered no-quibble refunds. He made customers pay in cash, or settle their bills quickly. Traditionally, shoppers had strung out their lines of credit for up to a year.
He also recognised that not everybody liked to haggle, with many welcoming the simplicity of being quoted a fair price, and being told to take it or leave it.
Stewart made this “one-price” approach work by accepting unusually low mark-ups. “[I] put my goods on the market at the lowest price I can afford,” he said, “although I realise only a small profit on each sale, the enlarged area of business makes possible a large accumulation of capital”.
This idea wasn’t totally unprecedented, but it was certainly considered radical.
The first salesman Stewart hired was appalled to discover he’d not be allowed to apply his finely tuned skill of sizing up the customer’s apparent wealth and extracting as extravagant a price as possible. He resigned on the spot, telling the youthful Irish shopkeeper he’d be bankrupt within a month.
Cathedrals of commerce
By the time Stewart died, over five decades later, he was one of the richest men in New York.
The great department stores became cathedrals of commerce. At Stewart’s “Marble Palace”, the shopkeeper boasted: “You may gaze upon a million dollars’ worth of goods, and no man will interrupt either your meditation or your admiration.”
They took shopping to another level, sometimes literally.
Corvin’s in Budapest installed a lift that became such an attraction in its own right that they began to charge for using it. In London, Harrods’s moving staircase carried 4,000 people an hour.
In such shops, one could buy anything from cradles to gravestones.
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Golf champion John Henry Taylor instructing customers at Harrods in 1914
Harrods offered a full funeral service. There were picture galleries, smoking rooms, tea rooms, concerts. The shop displays bled out into the street, as entrepreneurs built covered galleries around their stores.
It was, says historian Frank Trentmann, the birth of “total shopping”.
The glory days of the city centre department store have faded a little. With the rise of cars has come the out-of-town shopping mall, where land is cheaper.
Tourists in England still enjoy Harrods and Selfridges, but many also head to Bicester Village, a few miles north of Oxford, an outlet that specialises in luxury brands at a discount.
But the experience of going to the shops has changed remarkably little since pioneers such as Stewart and Selfridge turned it on its head. And it may be no coincidence that they did it at a time when women were gaining in social and economic power.
There are, of course, some tired stereotypes about women and their supposed love of shopping. But the evidence implies that the stereotypes aren’t completely imaginary.
Time-use studies suggest women spend more time shopping than men.
Other research indicates that this is a matter of preference as well as duty: men tend to say they like shops with easy parking and short checkout queues. Women are more likely to prioritise different aspects of the shopping experience, such as the friendliness of sales assistants.
Social reformer?
This wouldn’t have shocked Harry Gordon Selfridge. He saw that female customers offered profitable opportunities that other retailers were bungling.
One quietly revolutionary move was that Selfridges featured a ladies’ lavatory, a facility London’s shopkeepers had hitherto neglected to provide.
He saw – as other men apparently had not – that women might want to stay in town all day, without having to use an insalubrious public convenience or retreat to a respectable hotel for tea whenever they wanted to relieve themselves.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Selfridges was designed to be as attractive as possible to women
Selfridge’s biographer Lindy Woodhead even thinks he “could justifiably claim to have helped emancipate women”. That’s a big claim for a shopkeeper, but social progress can sometimes come from unexpected directions.
And Harry Gordon Selfridge certainly saw himself as a social reformer.
He once explained why, at his Chicago store, he’d introduced a creche. “I came along just at the time when women wanted to step out on their own,” he said.
“They came to the store and realised some of their dreams.”
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Some 8,000 trucks cross the Ambassador Bridge daily
As Canada, the US and Mexico prepare to sit down and renegotiate their trade deal at President Donald Trump’s request, unease has enveloped a motor industry town in Ontario which finds itself on the front lines of this battle over North American trade.
Every day some 8,000 trucks travel the 2.8km (1.75 miles) between border checkpoints at Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, under the steel arches of the Ambassador Bridge and over the Detroit River.
The 88-year-old bridge – the busiest border crossing by trade volume in North America – is a vital link between the two countries.
It connects industrial nerve centres in each country, feeding highly integrated cross-border supply chains.
And each day, trucks from Laval International, a 42-year-old compression mould making company based in Windsor, come and go across the span.
Company president Jonathon Azzopardi has a message he’d like to deliver to Donald Trump, as Canada, the US, and Mexico prepare to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta).
“Canada, of all three of the partners, is the only one that fulfilled its obligations,” he says.
“You didn’t fulfil your promises. We did.”
On 16 August, the three trading partners will sit down in Washington, DC, for the inaugural round of talks launched at US President Donald Trump’s behest.
Mr Azzopardi says Canadian companies like his have invested in the American and Mexican economies, creating jobs and helping to sustain communities.
“Did we profit from it? We grew, yes. But did we also reinvest? 100%. They can never take that away from us.”
He says he’d be “hard pressed” to find the same number of American and Mexican companies who did the same for the Canadian economy.
Image copyright Getty Images
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The Windsor, Ontario skyline seen from across the river in Detroit
In Windsor, where so many livelihoods and companies depend on Nafta, people are feeling wary, says Keith Henry, president at Windsor Mold, a tooling and automotive components company with divisions in Ontario, Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Mexico.
“The Nafta uncertainty is just causing – has caused – everybody to just pause because they don’t know where to invest, they don’t know what’s going to happen,” he says.
They hope legislators on both sides of the Canada-US border understand the vast and dynamic market that has grown within Nafta, which formed the world’s largest free trade zone when it came into force in 1994.
Nafta’s battlegrounds
Canada is America’s second largest trading partner. In 2016, more than $540bn-worth of goods passed over the border, from avocados from California to petroleum from Newfoundland and Labrador.
But while trade between the two countries is integral for both economies, manufacturing is heavily concentrated in specific regions and industries.
Almost 40% of all US goods sold to Canada comes from just five states: Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Texas and New York, and is concentrated in just a few industries such as automobiles and machinery.
In Canada, Ontario produces about half of all goods sold to the US and much of its products are tied up in the auto industry. All in all, the auto industry in Ontario and Michigan alone is responsible for about 12% of all trade between the two nations.
The Windsor-Detroit region is one of Nafta’s epicentres.
Windsorites see their town as a Detroit suburb, sharing a vital auto industry with Motor City.
The big three – General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) – have had their headquarters in Michigan. Ford and FCA have operations in Windsor, helping generate around 20,000 jobs.
Windsor is also a hub to move goods, services, and people across the border.
Almost 17% of all Canadian exports end up in Michigan. Over 10% of Canada’s imports from the US come from Michigan.
Because the border is so close and convenient, over 6,000 Windsor residents cross each day to work in the US, under Nafta provisions for professional workers.
Mr Azzopardi didn’t always support Nafta.
He remembers his father, the company founder, coming home and warning the freshly-inked trade deal was a job killer, a disaster for the Canadian economy and exporters like him.
Mexico had cheaper labour and could make cars for less. There were a couple of years of struggle in Windsor.
But the region’s manufacturers learned how to compete, becoming suppliers within the integrated continental market.
“We’ve expanded to Mexico, we’re growing together,” says Mr Azzopardi. “That’s the secret sauce that people don’t see.”
As the big three auto makers expanded operations into Mexico, their clients – companies like Laval International and Windsor Mold – expanded with them.
Says Keith Henry: “We didn’t put a plant in Mexico to take advantage of cheap labour and make parts there and ship them back to the United states and Canada.”
“We located in Mexico because our customers were expanding their business operations in that country.”
Zekelman Industries is the largest independent pipe and tube manufacturer in North America, producing 2.5 million tons of pipe and tube annually in 15 manufacturing plants in the US and Canada.
The company’s products can be found in the the roof of the Skydome, where Toronto’s popular baseball team – the Blue Jays – plays.
Image copyright Submitted
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Barry Zekelman of Zekelman Industries
The company also produced 125,000 tons of hollow steel structural tubing used in the security fence along the US-Mexico border.
CEO Barry Zekelman understands the resentment in US Rust Belt states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Wisconsin that helped propel Donald Trump into the White House.
He’s ready with a quote from another US presidential candidate, Ross Perot, who warned in 1992 that Nafta would result in the “giant sucking sound” of American jobs heading to Mexico.
“That’s exactly what happened,” he says.
“You have communities that you drive through, you go through these towns and they’ve disappeared. “
Mr Zekelman understands why the Trump administration has targeted the $63.2bn trade deficit the US has with Mexico, and doesn’t think that the White House takes real issue with Canada as a partner.
“Trump’s a big personality and that style rubs a lot of people the wrong way,” he says.
“But he’s there. He’s president and you have to learn how to deal with it. So everyone needs to calm down. I don’t think he has any animosity towards Canada.”
It’s a belief bolstered by comments the president made to his Mexican counterpart.
According to a leaked transcript of a January phone call recently published by the Washington Post, Trump told Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto that: “Canada is no problem – do not worry about Canada, do not even think about them. That is a separate thing and they are fine and we have had a very fair relationship with Canada”.
In July, the US set out its broad negotiation objectives for the talks, which include reducing the US trade deficit and improving market access in Canada and Mexico for US manufacturing, agriculture, and services.
Canadian industries in the US sights include dairy, wine, and grain.
Trade-dependent industries worry about who might become pawn in the negotiations, unsure what might be traded for more access or to protect another industry.
Canada’s economy is hugely dependent on trade with the US, with over 75% of its exports heading south across the border.
The trade pact opened up new export opportunities, helped businesses become globally competitive, and brought in foreign investment.
But it’s not an entirely a one-way street.
Canada isn’t without leverage, says Lawrence Herman, with the CD Howe Institute, an economic think tank.
“We purchase selected products, we’re a major market for so many states. The Midwest is highly dependent on trade with Canada. There are pressure points.”
Almost 9m American jobs are dependent on trade and investment with Canada.
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Media captionDairy wars: Why is Trump threatening Canada over milk?
It’s that message Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been bringing to American lawmakers.
Over the past few months, ministers, provincial premiers and even city mayors have beaten a path to the US to plead the pro-trade case.
Industry and lawmakers from US states that count on the agreement being there for business have also warned the administration to tread carefully in the Nafta renegotiations.
In Canada, there is no dispute that the US economy has to be sound. The country depends on its 320m consumers.
“If the US (economy) catches a cold, we die of the flu. And we shouldn’t be ashamed to say that,” says Mr Azzopardi.
“Just because we’re the little brother doesn’t mean we don’t contribute. We contribute a lot.”
The day Giles Fuchs failed his A-level results, his family gathered around the dining table for dinner as normal.
His father didn’t say a word during the meal, waiting until the plates had been cleared to turn to his son and say: “Giles, I hope you’re good with your hands.”
Hoping to prove his dad wrong despite the dismal results, the next day Mr Fuchs knocked on the door of the biggest estate agent chain in Northamptonshire to ask for a job.
“I’ll be the best negotiator you’ve ever had,” the teenager told the manager. “Can you start on Monday,” was his response.
Today a multi-millionaire 52-year-old, and co-founder and boss of UK serviced office business Office Space In Town (OSIT), Mr Fuchs says that the three years he spent working for that estate agency in the East Midlands gave him an invaluable grounding.
Image copyright OSiT
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OSIT’s buildings are designed to unique theme, in this case Alice in Wonderland
“It taught me how to interact with people – and how to sell,” he says.
Ambitious to be his own boss, at the age of 21 Mr Fuchs opened his own firm of estate agents with a friend in 1987.
The business was a success, and numerous other profitable ventures followed, including a disaster recovery company, until in 2010 he decided to join forces with his sister Niki and launch OSIT.
Just seven years later OSIT enjoys annual revenues of more than £20m.
Now valued at £200m, it has six buildings in London, and a further four in other parts of the UK.
Image copyright OSIT
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Tenants at its office near Monument in the City of London have access to a roof terrace
Serviced offices provide everything an entrepreneur or company needs to go into business. In addition to office space, they have internet access, desks, chairs, meeting rooms and even reception staff they can rely on.
The decision of Mr Fuchs and his sister to start OSIT was very much them following in the family tradition, as back in 1979 their mother had set up the first such businesses in the UK.
Niki had taken over the running of her mother’s business, City Executive Centres, and Mr Fuchs joined her in the early 2000s, before the business was ultimately sold in 2005.
OSIT’s first office opened in January 2011 in the Euston Tower in central London, using leased space.
Image copyright OSIT
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Giles and his sister Niki divide up the workload
However, a year later OSIT was able to start buying its own buildings, after joining forces with a property fund.
Mr Fuchs says this development was pivotal. “That turned us from being a serviced office manager, into a property company – and a successful one.”
As the owner of its own buildings, OSIT has more freedom to design and fit them out to its own specifications.
To stand out from the crowd, its interiors are all designed to a different, and some might say – outlandish – theme, from board game Monopoly, to Alice in Wonderful and the interior of a luxury yacht.
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The interiors of the offices are far from dull
Mr Fuchs says this gives each building a unique “character and personality”.
Owning its buildings, rather than leasing them, has also made it easier for OSIT to add extra facilities, such as hair salons, gyms, cafes, bars, and hotel rooms.
It also means that OSIT can lower its fees in the event of an economic downturn, as well as reap the gains as the value of commercial property rises.
That’s not to say that Mr Fuchs is expecting to cut charges anytime soon. A firm advocate of Brexit, he believes the pain of leaving the European Union will prove to be “a storm in a tea cup … the truth is, Britain is doing really well”.
He adds that while the fall in the value of the pound has helped exporters, it has also made investing in the UK more attractive to foreign entities.
“There is a wall of money arriving in London at the moment,” he says.
Last year a Chinese real estate asset manager called Kailong took a stake in OSIT for an undisclosed sum, and Mr Fuchs argues that the serviced office sector will continue to grow more appealing to investors.
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The company currently doesn’t have any plans to expand overseas
Currently the serviced office sector accounts for 7% of the UK office market.
This is worth £16bn, according to a report last year by research group Capital Economics, which predicts that the UK industry will rise to just over £60bn by 2025.
Andrew Shepherd-Barron, a serviced office sector analyst at Peel Hunt, agrees that the sector is ripe for further expansion.
He says that this growth is led by companies – both big and small – increasingly wanting the flexibility that serviced offices can offer, rather than being tied into long traditional office hire leases.
At OSIT while Mr Fuchs has the chief executive title, his sister is managing director.
He explains how they divide up the workload: “Niki looks into the business, running the business operationally, day-to-day.
Image copyright OSiT
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Mr Fuchs’ mother opened the UK’s first serviced office in this building in Northampton
“I look out, raising finance, finding buildings, and creating strategy.”
He adds that working with his sister is a “fabulous experience”. “I absolutely know she’s got my back covered.”
While Mr Fuchs may not have done well in his A-levels, he says that his dad is very pleased – not unsurprisingly – with what he has gone on to achieve.
“Both our parents are very proud [of both Niki and me],” he says.
“My mother started the [serviced offices] industry in the UK in 1979, in a tiny building in Northampton, and they are exceptionally pleased that we have picked up the baton and run with it.”
With hurricane season underway, at-risk small businesses need to make sure they have a response plan in place that helps mitigate potential damages. Unfortunately, many small companies don’t come close to checking the boxes for hurricane readiness. And this lack of preparedness can come at a significant cost.
As a Weather Company report pointed out, this year’s hurricane season — which officially began on June 1 and continues through November — is projected to be “busier than usual,” with 14 named storms expected. Of these projected storms, two have the potential to become major hurricanes. With rises in global temperatures prompting higher sea levels, there’s a greater likelihood that these storms will reach further inland than usual. That means more small businesses will be in the path of storms and vulnerable to this hurricane season’s potentially damaging impact as a result.
Historically, small businesses have a notably poor track record when it comes to coping with and recovering from natural disasters. According to FEMA data, nearly four out of 10 small organizations are forced to permanently close in the wake of a natural disaster. Despite that grim statistic, three out of four small businesses lack a disaster recovery plan. For very small businesses – those with 50 or fewer employees – that number jumps to four out of five.
For small businesses, dealing with hurricane season begins by firming up your internal preparedness. Here are some key steps business owners must take to proactively plan for a natural disaster such as a hurricane:
Frequently, disaster recovery is relegated to the bottom of a small business’ priority list – especially among businesses that aren’t in traditionally high-risk weather areas. But the reality is that no organization is immune to a disaster, regardless of its location. For all businesses, the path to preparedness begins with a plan – one that’s formalized across the company with the comprehensive steps required to quickly restore business functionality in the wake of a disaster.
Communicate your plan to all employees.
A disaster recovery plan can only be effective if everyone is on the same page about what it involves. Once small business leaders establish a plan, they must make sure their employees know what’s in it and what responsibilities each staff member has. That means posting or distributing a print version of the plan as well as discussing it at companywide meetings.
Create and store data backups.
By ensuring all your business’ proprietary data is securely backed up – either virtually or on a physical backup drive stored at a safe location – you can prevent a natural disaster turning into a data loss incident.
Only good nsurance hurricane-proofs your business.
The steps outlined above can significantly help small businesses bolster their hurricane readiness. But no business can be hurricane-proof without being properly insured. Yet there tends to be confusion about what proper hurricane insurance looks like. When it comes to protecting against hurricanes and similar events, small businesses should consider the regulations and expectations of their specific industry. However, there are certain insurance policies that are important for all businesses in the fight against hurricanes. For businesses across sectors, a hurricane insurance package isn’t complete without:
Commercial property insurance.
Whether you rent or own your business property, commercial property insurance can help ensure you have funds to pay for repairs or replacements needed after a storm. But read your paperwork carefully: while many property policies cover damage from hurricane winds, they exclude flood damage from rising water. If you’re in a hurricane-prone area, ask your agent about riders (officially called “endorsements”) to add to your policy for more complete coverage.
Businesses hit by a hurricane don’t only face the repercussions of replacing lost or damaged equipment – they also have to deal with lost time. And often, it’s the extended downtime following a storm that forces some small businesses to permanently close, as they continue to rack up costs without producing the revenue to cover them. Business interruption insurance helps alleviate this problem by providing organizations facing extended downtime with money to cover necessary expenditures like rent, taxes, loan payments, and salaries. But again, ask your agent what’s covered: business interruption insurance only offers protection if the incident that forced you to close is covered by your property policy.
As this year’s hurricane season intensifies, small businesses can protect themselves through a combination of internal preparedness and investing in comprehensive insurance. On this latter front, it’s vital for organizations to research and identify the specific insurance types that will ensure they’re optimally prepared. While this kind of preparation takes work, the cost of not preparing is too steep to risk.
Even though I’m learning and growing daily, life is still challenging. The more I learn, grow and become better, new challenges present themselves to me.
I am learning, over and over again, that being challenged, making mistakes and not knowing what I’m doing is part of life. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
I want to remind myself and you of this by bringing back an old 5 Minute Friday that I originally recorded about a year and a half ago.
I was inspired by a talk given by my good friend Rob Bell.
A video version was made as well, which is inspiring and beautiful.
Remember to be patient with your imperfections in Episode 519, 5 Minute Friday.
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The Internet of Things (IoT) is a rapidly evolving technology sector. As the popularity of connected devices increases with consumers, the number of entrants into the market grows. But rapid growth and iteration have had some unintended consequences in the IoT space, especially when it comes to usability.
Analytics firm IDC projects that by 2020, all industries will have rolled out an IoT program to help garner more data. IDC also predicts 30 billion smart devices will be collecting information by that same year. With so many devices on the market, it’s no wonder that integrating these various data sets could well be a not-insignificant issue.
The good news is a growing number of entrepreneurs have decided to tackle this problem by creating solutions that make it easier for devices to talk to one another. Rabih Nassar, founder and CEO of IoT solutions firm Scriptr, shared how integrated IoT programs can address this problem.
“We enable the orchestration of APIs from different IoT platforms and the creation of user experiences on top of the newly consolidated APIs through business logic, security and policies,” Nassar said. “For instance, if you’re a smart-building tenant, you can have a single app that controls your thermostats, lighting, heating/AC, blinds, building gates and garage doors — even though those services are actually being provided from a variety of incompatible physical and device-management and connectivity platforms.”
By connecting smart devices that otherwise would not operate together, entrepreneurs are making tech more user-friendly for people without a substantial IoT background.
Building integrated platforms.
Talk to anyone in the IoT space, and the conversation inevitably turns to the platform on which devices operate. It makes good sense: Devices with the potential to connect can do very little without software applications that make them usable. Unfortunately, there’s been little development toward platforms that help devices with varied functions work together.
Nassar explains why: “In situations in which standardized applications do not exist, companies need an IoT application platform that is agile and can offer carrier-class, enterprise-level solutions that they are used to.”
These developments are crucial before IoT can go mainstream in more industrial settings. Many of the current IoT creations are exciting, but their incompatibility with larger platforms means they tend to be seen as gimmicks. Consider smart lightbulbs, a fun technology for the home. To control output based on energy usage, they must connect to a device that monitors function and adapts settings. Otherwise, these lightbulbs become more of conversation pieces than true tools. Creating integrated platforms increases devices’ usefulness.
Consolidating apps.
The software space is a major problem for IoT when it comes to matters of practicality. Consumers with more than one IoT product — such as a Nest thermostat and a connected refrigerator — need multiple apps to manage their various devices. This naturally becomes a pain point, but there’s good news: Programmers are designing new programs to help solve the problem.
IoT startups are making IoT solutions scalable for larger organizations by consolidating these tools into singular app interfaces. Technology’s entire purpose is to make life easier, so decreasing the number of apps needed will be a critical step to help speed IoT adoption by the masses. Any company that can create this type of consolidation tool is poised to make significant gains as the industry grows.
Despite the challenges involved with developing new technology, the IoT community has been successful at forming strategic partnerships to help leverage one another’s strengths and advance solutions more quickly. That spirit of partnership is on the rise as more businesses consider IoT a critical component of success. By bridging technologies that otherwise would not work together, IoT providers model the kind of partnership that’s needed to drive greater adoption.
The private space industry has benefited greatly from similar collaborations. Companies such as Boeing, Lockheed, Orbital ATK and SpaceX share knowledge and other resources to help reach common goals. The pace of innovation in the IoT sector will increase rapidly in coming years if market leaders work together in a similar fashion.
“As demand for IoT technologies grows, entrepreneurs considering IoT solutions should look for ones that might help them achieve a competitive advantage,” Nassar says. “They should also assess their own competencies when rolling out IoT devices and find partners who help fill in the gaps in experience to prevent any bottlenecks or project delays.”
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Clarks calls its girls’ shoe range Dolly Babe
Clarks has been accused of “everyday sexism” for a range of girls’ school shoes called “Dolly Babe”, while the boys’ equivalent is called “Leader”.
The girls’ shoes carry a heart-patterned insole, while the boys’ insoles are decorated with footballs.
The shoe manufacturer has removed the Dolly Babe range from its website following “customer feedback”.
Clarks added: “We are working hard to ensure our ranges reflect our gender-neutral ethos.”
However, the range is still available online from retailers including Amazon and John Lewis and the Leader range remains on sale.
Image copyright Clarks
Image caption
Clarks calls its boys’ shoe range Leader
Miranda Williams, a councillor and cabinet member for children and young people in Greenwich, southeast London, took Clarks to task on Twitter this week.
Carolyn Harris, shadow minister for women and equalities, described the situation as “blatant discrimination”, while Sarah Ludford, a Liberal Democrat peer and shadow Brexit minister, called the name choices “depressing”.
Lesley Williams, a Gloucestershire councillor, tweeted that it was “offensive”:
Clarks said it was removing the Dolly Babe name from stocks in stores, but warned the process would take “time to complete”.
The row follows another claim of sexism levelled against Clarks earlier this month by Jemma Moonie-Dalton, who wrote a Facebook post about trying to buy school shoes for her seven-year-old daughter and five-year-old son at a Clarks store in east London.
“In the boys’ section the shoes are sturdy, comfortable and weatherproof with soles clearly designed with running and climbing in mind,” she wrote. “In contrast, the girls’ shoes have inferior soles, are not fully covered and are not well padded at the ankle. They are not comfortable and are not suited to outdoor activities in British weather.”
Clarks said it was creating more unisex shoes in response to customer feedback and promoting its gender-neutral stance both online and in store.
But Williams said Clarks had failed to learn lessons from a similar controversy last summer. In a Facebook post that went viral, Welsh mother Laura Greenwood accused Clarks of making girls’ shoes that are “fussy, impractical and prone to scuffing – quite unlike your sensible, practical, durable ranges designed for boys”.
The move, announced last month, follows complaints about adverts such as one for Aptamil baby milk formula that showed girls growing up to be ballerinas and boys becoming engineers.
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