Three kinds of corporate mediocrity

Uncaring mediocrity, in which employees have given up trying to make things better
Focused mediocrity, in which the organization is intentionally average
Accidental mediocrity, in which people don’t even realize that they’re not delivering excellence.

Uncaring mediocrity is the most common form, and it often accompanies scale. It’s the accidental outcome that comes from trying to emulate an organization that’s focused on its mediocrity.

The mechanization and industrialization of cottage industries (like hotels, restaurants and healthcare) has led to a convenient homogenization for many. It means you can travel around the world and find better than decent accommodations and safe food, all at a fair price.

But it also means that most of the people working in these entities are treated like interchangeable cogs. They have no say at all about how things are done (or at least feel that way) and so they’ve emotionally checked out. It’s easier that way.

The products and services revert to the mean, sucking the humanity out of not just the people who work there, but from the interactions the customers have as well.

If you have a lousy meal at a real restaurant, the owner could hear from you and, it’s likely, not only fix it, but get back to you. Have a lousy experience with a Host, a Taco Bell, or a JW Marriott, though, and the odds are that the individual who reads your review has never even visited the place you’re talking about, and certainly doesn’t care enough to do anything about it.

One of the promises of the worldwide behemoth corporation was that reliability and quality was assured. The downside is that the chances that an internal insurgent can make things better go down.

As we see so many organizations seek to emulate the scale, influence and profits of the Fortune 100, it’s worth remembering that uncaring mediocrity shouldn’t be a north star.

Focused mediocrity is different. It’s intentional. It’s the act of chasing the banal, so that the largest possible number of people will be satisfied enough not to complain. This is the sieve of deliverability and the sword of mass.

The third kind of mediocrity happens when someone is uninformed. When they’re too busy or too lazy to pay attention to the taste of those they seek to serve or they don’t care enough to deliver it with quality and humanity.

At least have the guts to be mediocre on purpose.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/582838302/0/sethsblog~Three-kinds-of-corporate-mediocrity/

Easyship, a Stripe for global e-commerce shipping, raises $4M

Easyship, a Hong Kong-based startup that aims to make international shipping for e-commerce as easy as payments, has closed a $4 million Series A round.

The company was founded in 2015 by former Lazada duo Tommaso Tamburnotti and Augustin Ceyrac, and ex-banker Paul Lugagne Delpon. From their time with Lazada, the then-Rocket Internet-owned e-commerce site in Southeast Asia that was later bought by Alibaba, Tamburnotti and Ceyrac came to realize that there was no ‘plug in’ solution for shipping in the same way that Stripe and others enable payments online.

In Lazada’s case, that was crucial. The company was trying to enable cross-border commerce in Southeast Asia and, as a part of that, seek out retailers in more mature markets like China. But, if sending product to Indonesia — Southeast Asia’s largest country with a population of over 250 million — was fraught with challengers, then both retailers and consumers would be put off using the service.

That’s how Easyship was born. Today, the startup works with over 250 services from some 50-plus couriers, it also deals with the likes of Amazon, Shopify, eBay, Etsy, Magento and more. Its team of more than 50 people is spread across offices in New York, Singapore, the Netherlands, Australia, and Hong Kong.

Its service adds shipment options to e-commerce pages to make it simple for retailers to offer overseas shipping, and customers to receive product in any market. They simply input a line of code, which then offers international shipping options for customer when they check out. Not only does it simplify shipping routes but Easyship claims it can help cut shipping costs by up to 60 percent. Its base of 40,000 SMBs have seen their overall sales increase by 40 percent on average.

“We saw there was an opportunity when we couldn’t find a solution that was a gateway for international
shipping,” Ceyrac said in a statement. “For example, it’s easy for sellers to find payment gateways that can be activated in minutes so they can start accepting all major forms of payment. Yet, there was no equivalent tool for logistics, where you could just mobilize on global sales.”

“At the time, the only choices for small business owners were to use large enterprise solutions that were meant for Fortune 500 companies, or to integrate with multiple players to achieve a truly global solution,’ he added.

Easyship founders (left to right) Paul Lugagne Delpon, Tommaso Tamburnotti and Augustin Ceyrac

Tamburnotti told TechCrunch that the new funds will go towards developing the company’s technology — which helps to find cost-effective shipping routes — as well as adding more shipment and logistics partners, and reaching more customers, particularly in the U.S.

The sources of the round are interesting in themselves, too. Maximilian Bittner, who founded Lazada and was its long-time CEO, led the deal alongside Richard Lepeu, the former CEO of luxury firm Richemont and a board member of Yoox Net-A-Porter Group. Existing investor Lamivoie Capital Partners and funds Rubicon Venture Capital, One Way Ventures, Kima Ventures and Picus Capital also joined the round. 500 Startups is another investor in the business.

Easyship’s solution is so logical it almost seems obvious, but it is a business that has been created because it is outside of the U.S. and Silicon Valley. U.S. e-commerce firms have woken up to overseas opportunities, but they tend to be focused on obvious and huge markets like China. Logistics to other parts of the world are fiddling (it’s hugely fragmented) and likely not worth the initial investment unless the investment in a patient one.

But, for Easyship’s founders, the issue of fragmented logistics in Asia became such a critical one that they jumped ship from their full-time jobs — with the blessing of their CEO, Bittner — to tackle the problem. The firm is making ambitious moves in the U.S., having opened a New York office this year, and it’ll be a company to watch. The company has already fielded acquisition offers, but it is aiming to stay independent and grow its share of the U.S. market by enabling retailers, and particularly smaller players, to expand their sales globally.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/29/easyship-4-million/

Microsoft wins $480M military contract to outfit soldiers with HoloLens AR tech

Microsoft is readying its HoloLens augmented reality tech for combat. The company just won a $480 million military contract with the U.S. government to bring AR headset tech into the weapon repertoires of American soldiers.

The two-year contract may result in follow-on orders of more than 100,000 headsets according to documentation describing the bidding process. One of the contract’s tag lines for the AR tech seems to be its ability to enable “25 bloodless battles before the 1st battle,” suggesting that actual combat training is going to be an essential aspect of the AR headset capabilities.

“Augmented reality technology will provide troops with more and better information to make decisions. This new work extends our longstanding, trusted relationship with the Department of Defense to this new area,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement sent to TechCrunch.

Magic Leap was also pursuing the contract according to the report in Bloomberg. The military contract bid was perhaps a bit more of a stretch for the company which has previously maintained that its company’s efforts are focused centrally on consumers. The startup has only recently released its first development kit, while Microsoft’s tech has been in developer hands for more than two years.

Some of the documentation (PDF download) surrounding this bid is intensely interesting and really showcases how extensively the military has researched how augmented reality tech can alter the training and combat environments of soldiers.

Obviously, Microsoft wouldn’t just be planning to take what it’s been selling to factory workers and put it onto a battlefield, but the system requirements outlined in the contract already seem to eclipse what the current generation HoloLens optics are capable of, including items like the device’s FoV which will have a requirement of between 55 and 110 degrees.

Other stipulations include the device being no heavier than 1.5 pounds and being compatible with existing military helmets. The head-worn device would specifically track weapons and allow soldiers to see simulated fire from their real weapons while offering offering training with weapons like Javelin missile systems in a completely simulated environment.

These are all just early frameworks, but Microsoft now will be developing technologies that keep the U.S. military at the forefront of augmented reality tech, something that will probably be a boon to their enterprise focused solutions as well.

from Microsoft – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/microsoft-wins-480m-military-contract-to-outfit-soldiers-with-hololens-ar-tech/

“People like us” — an update on This is Marketing

My new book launched about two weeks ago. Thanks to you, it went to #1 on the Wall Street Journal business bestseller list, made the New York Times list and best of all, has led to an ever-growing series of conversations about the ideas inside. The collectible multiplies that by eight.

One of the best reasons to create a print book is that it becomes a direct way to establish what people like us are talking about. And a third of our sales are in the audio edition, which is a fascinating insight into how people are consuming ideas now.

Thank you to every single person who contributed, who shared, who took a leap. I appreciate it. Can’t wait to see what you do with the ideas inside.

       

from Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect https://feeds.feedblitz.com/~/582698612/0/sethsblog~People-like-us-an-update-on-This-is-Marketing/

Amazon debuts a scale model autonomous car to teach developers machine learning

Amazon today announced AWS DeepRacer, a fully autonomous 1/18th scale race car that aims to help developers learn machine learning. Priced at $399 but currently offered for $249, the race car lets developers to get hands-on – literally – with a machine learning technique called reinforcement learning (RL).

RL takes a different approach to training models than other machine learning techniques, Amazon explained.

It’s a type of machine learning that works when an “agent” is allowed to act on a trial-and-error basis within an interactive environment. It does so using feedback from those actions to learn over time in order to reach a predetermined goal or to maximize some type of score or reward.

This makes it different from other machine learning techniques – like Supervised Learning, for example – as it doesn’t require any labeled training data to get started, and it can make short-term decisions while optimizing for a long-term goal.

The new race car lets developers experiment with RL by learning through autonomous driving.

We are pleased and excited to announce AWS DeepRacer and the AWS DeepRacer League. New reinforcement learning powered AWS service and racing league ML powered cars. #reInvent pic.twitter.com/9Qmmqj4Ebw

— AWS re:Invent (@AWSreInvent) November 28, 2018

Developers first get started using a virtual car and tracks in a cloud-based 3D racing simulator, powered by AWS RoboMaker. Here, they can train an autonomous driving model against a collection of predefined race tracks included with the simulator, then evaluate them virtually or choose to download them to the real-world AWS DeepRacer car.

They can also opt to participate in the first AWS DeepRacer League at the re:Invent conference, where the car was announced. This event will take place over the next 24 hours in the AWS DeepRacer workshops and at the MGM Speedway and will involve using Amazon SageMaker, AWS RoboMaker, and other AWS services.

There are 6 main tracks each with a pit area, a hacker garage, and two extra tracks developers can use for training and experimentation. There will also be a DJ.

The League will continue after the event as well, with a series of live racing events starting in 2019 at AWS Global Summits worldwide. Virtual tournaments will also be hosted throughout the year, Amazon said, with the goal of winning the AWS DeepRacer 2019 Championship Cup at re:invent 2019.

As for the car’s hardware itself, it’s a 1/18th scale, radio-controlled, four-wheel drive vehicle powered by an Intel Atom processor. The processor runs Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, ROS (Robot Operating System), and the Intel OpenVino computer vision toolkit.

The car also includes a 4 megapixel camera with 1080p resolution, 802.11ac WiFi, multiple USB ports, and battery power that will last for about 2 hours.

It’s available for sale on Amazon here.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/amazon-debuts-a-scale-model-autonomous-car-to-teach-developers-machine-learning/

Amazon Elastic Inference will reduce deep learning costs by ~75%

Amazon Web Services today announced Amazon Elastic Inference, a new service that lets customers attach GPU-powered inference acceleration to any Amazon EC2 instance and reduces deep learning costs by up to 75 percent.

“What we see typically is that the average utilization of these P3 instances GPUs are about 10 to 30 percent, which is pretty wasteful with elastic inference. You don’t have to waste all that costs and all that GPU,” AWS chief executive Andy Jassy said on stage at the AWS re:Invent conference earlier today. “[Amazon Elastic Inference] is a pretty significant game changer in being able to run inference much more cost-effectively.”

Amazon Elastic Inference will also be available for Amazon SageMaker notebook instances and endpoints, “bringing acceleration to built-in algorithms and to deep learning environments” the company wrote in a blog post. It will support machine learning frameworks TensorFlow, Apache MXNet and ONNX.

We want our customers to have the right tools for the right job. We are pleased to announce Amazon Elastic Inference to allow customers to add elastic GPU support for scalable inference on any EC2 instance, to get great cost savings. #reInvent pic.twitter.com/7rbaM5O5QF

— AWS re:Invent (@AWSreInvent) November 28, 2018

It’s available in three sizes:

• eia1.medium: 8 TeraFLOPs of mixed-precision performance.
• eia1.large: 16 TeraFLOPs of mixed-precision performance.
• eia1.xlarge: 32 TeraFLOPs of mixed-precision performance.

Dive deeper into the new service here.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/amazon-elastic-inference-will-reduce-deep-learning-costs-by-75/

Amazon gets into the blockchain with Quantum Ledger Database & Managed Blockchain

Amazon last year dismissed the idea of getting into the blockchain with AWS, but today that’s changed. The company announced a new service called Amazon Quantum Ledger Database or QLDB, which is a fully managed ledger database with a central trusted authority. The service, which is launching into preview today, offers an append-only, immutable journal that tracks the history of all changes, Amazon said.

And all the changes are cryptographically chained and verifiable.

The company announced the product on stage today at AWS:ReInvent, noting QLDB’s other features – including its transparent nature, ability to automatically scale up or down as needed, ease of use, and speed. The database can execute two to three times more transactions, Amazon claimed, compared with existing products.

It also announced a managed blockchain service.

“It will be really scalable, you’ll have a much more flexible and robust set of APIs for you to make any kind of changes or adjustments to the ledger database,” said Andy Jassy, AWS CEO, in describing the new QLDB offering.

On the QLDB website, Amazon explains the new database in more depth:

Amazon QLDB is a new class of database that eliminates the need to engage in the complex development effort of building your own ledger-like applications. With QLDB, your data’s change history is immutable – it cannot be altered or deleted – and using cryptography, you can easily verify that there have been no unintended modifications to your application’s data. QLDB uses an immutable transactional log, known as a journal, that tracks each application data change and maintains a complete and verifiable history of changes over time. QLDB is easy to use because it provides developers with a familiar SQL-like API, a flexible document data model, and full support for transactions. QLDB is also serverless, so it automatically scales to support the demands of your application. There are no servers to manage and no read or write limits to configure. With QLDB, you only pay for what you use.

QLDB was one of AWS’ blockchain-related announcements today. The company also debuted AWS Managed Blockchain, which can work with QLDB. (More on that here).

“Amazon Managed Blockchain is a fully managed service that allows you to set up and manage a scalable blockchain network with just a few clicks,” Amazon said in an announcement. The product eliminates the overhead required to create the network and automatically scales to meet the demands of thousands of applications running millions of transactions, it said.

It also manages your certificates, lets you easily invite new members to join the network, and tracks operational metrics such as usage of compute, memory, and storage resources.

Managed Blockchain is able to replicate an immutable copy of your blockchain network activity into Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB), which lets you analyze the network activity outside the network and gain insights into trends.

Interested customers can sign up for Amazon Managed Blockchain preview here.

And those with applications that need an immutable and verifiable ledger database can try out Amazon QLDB here.

from Amazon – TechCrunch https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/28/amazon-gets-into-the-blockchain-with-quantum-ledger-database-managed-blockchain/