From time to time I revisit some seminal business books. This is the case of the E-Myth, which every small business owner and entrepreneur should at least know what is about. Through a number of anecdotes, the author makes his case for building businesses with a system in-place from the very beginning.

In one of the chapters, the concepts of the Technician, the Manager, and the Entrepreneur are introduced. These three characters are not different people, but they are rather all living in the business owner’s head. They rarely talk all at the same time, but they take turns, depending on the context, or just the mood of the business owner.

Let’s take a look at each of them and understand why are they important, and why is it also important not to let them take over completely:

THE TECHNICIAN

This is the part in you that knows the craft. You have probably done this (whatever “this”means!) for years, you understand the market, the industry, and know very much what has to be done to produce a quality output.

Why is it important? It is the basis of the commodity you produce. It is necessary for having domain expertise and know how to create the state of the art.

Why must be kept in check? The business is never the commodity you produce, but the value that you create for your customers. Technicians seek refuge in their craft and generally want to produce what THEY believe the customer SHOULD love. The Technician is at odds with the Entrepreneur who tends to fly high and doesn’t know what can and cannot be done, and is also at odds with the Manager who wants consistency and to follow process, when the Technician just wants to express themselves through their craft.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

This is the creative, hard-charging, visionary part in you. The Entrepreneur comes up with new ideas, products to try. Gets excited about the possibilities and drops everything to pursue the next thing.

Why is it important? The only way to move a business forward and face adversity, is with this spirit. The Entrepreneur is what keeps the business evolving and makes sure that there is “business creation”, instead of just putting out products. Without an Entrepreneur, the output that the business generates can lose its appeal.

Why must be kept in check? The Entrepreneur does not like sticking to a predetermined process, they would like to try something new (again!). The Entrepreneur also gives little regard to the craft, to getting product out the door. The Entrepreneur is at odds with the Manager who wants to control things, make them repeatable, and with the Technician, who is the one tasked to execute on some of the crazy ideas the Entrepreneur comes up with.

THE MANAGER

The Manager is the one who builds a repeatable business. Creates processes, documents them. Trains people to do things the same way. Control costs.

Why is it important? Without a real Manager, there is rarely a sustainable business. The Manager creates value by creating repeatable processes that produce repeatable products and services that customers can buy.

Why must be kept in check? The Manager, left to its own, will create procedures that are so rigid that don’t allow space for creativity, for producing things that are of value for the customer. The Manager is at odds with the Entrepreneur who wants to change things around constantly, and with the Technician who thinks they know the craft enough that there is no need for them to follow process.

Do you recognize these inside you? Do you lean more towards one, or the other?

I feel like we are steadily moving towards complete electrification of our transportation system. I know, it is not happening overnight, but according to several articles even though only 1% of vehicles in the USA are electric, and that you may be one in the 46% of Americans who would NOT consider buying one, legislation and other incentives point for accelerated change in the not so far future. The European Union, California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington will not allow for selling internal combustion engines after 2035. Vermont is pulling that goal forward five years to 2030. Another three states, Colorado, Virginia, and Minnesota are not shutting down their sales, but have set aggressive market share goals.

So my question is: what happens to gas stations when most vehicles become electric? Most “experts” suggest that they have to be converted to charging facilities.

I cannot disagree more.

The dynamics are quite different. Gas stations have evolved in a way where they are capable of holding hundreds of gallons of an explosive fluid safely, and are located at major roads or intersections to allow drivers to stop for a 1-5 minute top-up. Because of this, the priority is on the speedy service, and there is usually not much for the driver there.

It is easy to make a tank that can be filled quickly. It is only necessary to open a bigger mouth to pour more fuel, more quickly, into the tank. Charging is a completely different thing. And even though that it can be optimized for quick charging, “topping-up” a battery involves a recombination of the materials inside the battery, which can be slow and usually produces heat. Then there is also this pesky thing called “resistance”, which also produces heat, and produces more the faster you try to charge. I don’t think we will be able to charge batteries in the same time we top up a gasoline or diesel tank. At least, not by 2035. Because of this, charging will always be slower. On the flip side, to put a charger in-place, there is no need to deal with hundreds of gallons of explosives. We need a better power outlet, for sure, but as long as we keep the capacity to a few vehicles simultaneously, the load is not going to be much more than a tanning spa’s.

The solution? “Charging” has to happen the same way as I dry my hair: while I do some other stuff. Charge at places that we visit for something else, and where we are likely to spend at least 1/2 hour. The good news is that we are already thinking this way, putting in chargers at the grocery store, the barber shop, etc. Now, this does not leave any room for a gas station, which is basically a place where we cannot wait to be out of there. My prediction? If gas stations want to keep their energy business, they all have to convert to restaurants, coffee shops, and co-working spaces.

I know what you’re thinking: “Great. Just what we needed. Another article about fantastic technologies.”

I promise this one is *slightly* different and is targeted not at my techno-bro friends, but more for all the capable business people on this platform who don’t consider themselves technologists. I am aiming, not only to name and define the technology, but also to state, in the most succinct way, why each of these is so disrupting.

5G

Had to have a G in there, right? 5G does not refer only to the latest iPhone you are getting. 5G is a combination of new radio (access), and network (backhaul, metro) specifications. Yes, a fully deployed 5G network will make your movie downloads completely seamless, but the biggest difference with previous generations is what we call “latency”, which -until now- remained mostly unaddressed. Mobile -and in general other- networks, are measured mostly by three performance parameters: bandwidth, capacity, and latency. If you imagine a restaurant, the number of tables determines how many diners can be served at once. We call this capacity. Then, the number of cooks and waiters going back and firth from the kitchen determines how many plates can be served at a time. This is what we call bandwidth. But if we are having a five-course meal and one of the tables, it will also determine how long it will take for serving from the appetizer, to dessert. This is why, with limited bandwidth, service deteriorates both with the amount of people connected, as well as with the size of the files they are downloading. This gets us to the final one, latency. Now imagine that our hypothetical restaurant has a detached kitchen two blocks (or three minutes) away from the tables. In this case, no matter how many cooks or waiters we hire, a waiter’s round trip will always be six minutes. Doesn’t sound that bad, considering I had to wait 45 minutes to be seated a few days ago; but things get especially bad when there is any back-and-forth involved. Any scenario where the kitchen is trying to address a special request, or fix a mistake, will require two or three times that the waiter has to talk to the back to the house. That’s a full additional 12 to 18 minutes to get served! Now imagine if the waiter is trying to get the defibrillator from the kitchen.

No bueno.

5G mitigates the effects of latency dramatically, not only on the wireless network, but also on anything connected through copper or fiber.

Why is revolutionary: coverage will become universal, and real time command, and therefore telepresence becomes possible. There have already been some tests performing remote surgery through a 5G network. Because of this, it has the potential to DISTRIBUTE certain activities that were only possible at a central location.

Metaverse

Only possible in a world without latency, the unsatisfied initial expectations and false starts with Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality have made of the Metaverse an over-used word. Most of us are only looking at the most obvious applications like meeting remotely, or gaming. Frankly, these don’t get me excited either, but where I do see great possibilities is for those applications that we haven’t thought about yet. What could we create that is not a mere copy of the real world, but something that doesn’t exist at all? For example, we are accustomed to see, in real-time, some of the laws of physics play out. We can see basic Newtonian mechanics on a Pool table. There are other types of laws that we cannot visualize, like grammar, or actual law. What if we could see how these interplay?

Why is it revolutionary: It completes the technologies necessary for distributing certain activities, and it opens a new frontier for imagination.

Internet of Things (IoT)

This is where we connect everything. Most IoT systems are sensors, temperature, presence, light, status, etc.

We have already seen how much more capable computers have become after the Internet was introduced, and the much bigger leap once people became connected with supercomputers in their pockets. What happens when everything, even inanimate objects start to contribute to that body of knowledge? Did I say “body”? Well, that’s another way of thinking of it. Imagine world where “things” can get “thirsty”, or feel “pain”; and we can chose to be aware of them.

Why is it revolutionary: Provides more data to make decisions. Objects become intelligent and their “attributes” (color, size, etc.) expand beyond the basic ones and become digitized. It removes human error from in-between.

AI

Had to include it. No, it is not going to enslave us or kill us. What AI makes possible is that it creates leverage on human knowledge. It is the next logical step. First we had speech to be able to download from one brain to another, during the same lifetime. Then we invented writing. This gave us storage. The ability to write it once and recall it many times, and also later in time. The ability to “install software” in human brains across generations. Then the printing press, which gave us the ability to replicate the source, to “license” it and use it simultaneously. Then we digitized everything and we made it available through search engines. This made information available “on demand”, making it unnecessary to “install” it. You just get it when you need it. This final step, allows us to make sense of information quicker, and apply knowledge. We went from being able to look up Socratic logic, to have it applied to something.

Why is it revolutionary: we get a human intelligence force multiplier and decision tool that abstracts the simpler tasks from us.

Autonomous Robotics

Things get done without human intervention. The Roomba is probably the closest to us.

Why is it revolutionary: We cannot be everywhere, all the time. Things fall through the cracks. Let another piece of the “ecosystem” take care of it. Autonomous robots give us a way to fight back entropy, the relentless motion of the universe towards disorder, together with IoT and AI gives us the possibility to have a dynamically changing environment tailored to our wishes.

3-D Printing

3D printers are becoming more and more capable, to the point that 3D printed parts are being used now as “production” components. Printing allows for geometries not possible before (think pieces inside cavities of other pieces) because of the “additive” nature of this method of manufacturing and the possibility to use several different materials.

Why is it revolutionary: 3D printing makes it possible to “license” parts instead of selling the actual physical part, eliminating unnecessary shipping, but it also decouples the cost of manufacturing from the production batch size. This phenomena has already been experienced with high speed production quality laser printers replacing some applications of industrial-grade printing presses (offset, flexography, etc.)

Renewable Energies

This one raises so many emotions. Among others, we have unimaginable attachment to our trucks and other internal combustion engine toys. It doesn’t matter what you think, this is coming. The cost of solar is doubling now every three years. And the interesting part here, is once installed, the energy is FREE. This promises to have a major effect on our economies. Imagine that almost anything would have a marginal cost of zero to produce the next unit.

Why is it revolutionary: Once in-place, renewable energies are trending to zero cost. In addition, DECENTRALIZATION of the energy grid brings better resiliency and independence.

Blockchain and Web3

Forget Bankman-Fried and other fraudsters. The Blockchain is the technology that is here to stay to store value, but more importantly TRUTH. Still in its nascent phase, Web3 will incorporate Blockchain technology to be able to save state, reputation, value for each user and allow each of them to control it.

Why is it revolutionary: Another DECENTRALIZING technology. Just as Renewables decentralize the grid, Web3 and the blockchain, make it possible to dispose of banks, central banks, and even the big tech giants like Meta or Google. You could own your information once again, and decide who and why do they get it, and in exchange of what.

Human-Robot Collaboration

Another human-augmentation technology. It has been a while since we have created something as powerful as this. “Co-bots”, as they are called, are really intelligent tools that can execute tasks after taught. They are also aware of humans, so they don’t have to live in a cage to keep them from hurting people accidentally.

Why is it revolutionary: Robotics have been around for several decades and have provided immense productivity, and quality increase for large industries, but small business have mostly been prevented from these benefits, until now. Co-bot prices currently run from the few hundred dollars (even LESS than $100!) up to the price of an average car, depending on the weight they can handle. The stronger, the more expensive. Robotics is now affordable by small businesses.

Precision Fermentation

Oooh! The non-GMO folks are going to chew on me on this one. Precision fermentation is a mix of different biotechnologies and food processing. Precisely manipulating microorganisms makes it possible to make a variety of products through a process similar to brewing beer. Lab-brewed milk (100% milk, not something that looks like it, but a liquid that is identical to milk) is already available at some supermarkets. I have tried the ice cream and is fabulous.

Why is it revolutionary: This technology has the potential to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions (bovine-emmited methane can be 80 times more harmful than CO2, depending on how you measure it) and animal cruelty. Besides this, it has the potential to disrupt a $890B global industry employing 3.3 million people just in the US.

See the pattern? Each of these technologies by itself is pretty remarkable they fall into three categories categories: either enhancing humans or taking them out of the equation, and some form of decentralization or deintermediation; which will all radically change the way we do things today; but perhaps the most outstanding thing about them is that they are about to hit us almost in unison. The level of disruption this can generate is enormous. How are you preparing for these shifts in the marketplace? and Did I miss any that you think is as remarkable?

Do you remember that campaign?

In the early iPhone days, when Apple was attempting to jumpstart the AppStore and to get the ecosystem going, it would come up on all media. It quickly became a catch phrase to convey that whomever was on the receiving end was not acquainted enough with current technologies, and that was probably struggling with something that could be solved much easier with an App.

What’s brilliant about it, is that even though the campaign was conceived to push the AppStore concept (something that, by the way, both Nokia and Palm attempted to do before with partial success), and by extension, the iPhone, the emphasis was never on the “there’s and app” part, as much as on the “for THAT” piece.

It is never about the cold beer, but about the spot it hits on a hot summer day. It is never about the scratch, but about the itch it stops. From the client’s perspective, is never about your product, and always about the use-case, the pain point they are trying to solve.

If you follow me, you are probably either sick of hearing me talk about them, or you are already a believer that the world has gone exponential. I just wish it would be as simple as to ask anybody to just recognize that there have been probably more advances in the last 10 years than during the century before; that I could just instantly share that feeling that there is a new thing every week, even every day, and that the things that were hip just a few months ago are quickly becoming obsolete and even embarrassing.

Then there is the inevitability of it all. How do we know if it will ever slow back again? will it always be like this?

Like with any strong belief, they first hit us with an intuitive blow, and only after we have faith in them is when we find the logical explanations to what we already know. How do you make an argument for exponentiality?

True exponentiality, is not just about speed, but about things getting ever faster. With the linear thinking we are accustomed to, it may seem hard to believe that there are no limits for how fast can we go.

Starting with something much simpler, something that can be experienced during a more intuitive timeframe, can help to understand what we are facing.

I am referring to how individual technologies are introduced, something that we have seen many times in our lifetime. This is also a concept that I have caught Peter Diamandis mention almost in a throwaway fashion in many of his talks, usually as “hundreds of compounding ‘s’ curves…”. I think that the concept is so important, that it deserves an article like this.

Most technologies take some time to develop and to become truly useful. Some, when first introduced, don’t even have a use-case that would help with their adoption, and even when products or solutions mature and have all the features needed, it takes some time to go mainstream. As a result, the introduction of most technologies ends up following something like an “S curve” (or “sigmoid” for its mathematical function). The “technology hype” graph (with its typical shape shown below with a dashed line), is a slight variation, with an initial overshot accounting for the overexcitement and initial hype.

In the first  phase, progress is slow, and it looks like nothing’s happening, almost a failure, but then, something creates cloth and the public starts to adopt the new technology. We enter the growth phase. At this point, progress seems almost linear, predictable. It is tempting to think that growth will continue at that trend. New ventures many times capitalize on this trend to predict exorbitant valuations and secure funding.

Eventually, either because the market becomes saturated and the pool of new customers is depleted, or because the success of the business attracts competitors, growth begins to slow down, and a “plateau” develops. With purely fad-driven innovations, there is even some kind of decline, but usually, if the technology has a true advantage and it adds value, it stays around for much longer than after the headlines stop talking about it.

Now I am going to make a leap. A small one, but still a leap. I will say that the overall benefits that a technology provides to society at large, follow an S-curve as well. No adoption, no benefit. Maximum adoption, maximum benefit. We can call this the “technology benefit”, or  “technology impact” curve. You may argue that there are some technologies that don’t require a lot of adoption to have an impact, but they still need to be adopted by the few users that are needed to have an impact, and they will still have a period of no impact, and then, after a while, top impact.

Interestingly enough, technology introduction is not the only place where these types of curves come into play. They seem to be connected to a variety of natural processes. Actually, in the very definition of the sigmoid function on Wikipedia, this behavior is mentioned to be related to learning curves, crop yield, titration curves, etc.

But innovations don’t happen in isolation. There are a number of technologies being adopted at any given time, at different stages in their cycle. In reality, you may have dozens, hundreds of these S-curves overlapping at different times.  It is easy to accept that this is the overall approximate behavior of any technology’s impact because we have seen it before. If we consider that there seems to be a new, smaller invention, or improvement coming out all the time, we’ll have something like the graph below.

So far, good? Alright!, so here is what happens when these individual S-curves are added together to calculate the overall “technology impact”:

This is without even considering that some technologies may have a larger impact than others (the curves in the example above had a maximum plateau of one).  Now, the first part of that curve looks way too much like an exponential, and it only plateaus out because I stopped at four “inventions”. According to this reasoning, as long as we keep coming out with small, incremental improvements, the result will never plateau out, and will be a full exponential, going up, into the right, getting steeper and steeper all the time.

By this, if we accept our “S” curve model, and that there are endless small innovations possible, then the world has gone exponential, and will never go back to what it was. We will continue to see changes coming at us ever faster, continuing to accelerate.

But what does this really mean for all of us? Can’t we just get off the train? Jump off the treadmill?

More on that on the next episode in this series.

NOTE: A version of this article was published a couple of weeks ago on EXOInsight.

No, this is not about some startup working on the next iteration of “smellorama”, but it is about something that could stink as well.

We go about our lives participating in the digital marketplace, interact with businesses and other individuals. We purchase stuff, use services, shop around looking for options, wear a smart watch. Overshare. Then we are surprised when we are offered exactly the thing we just mentioned and we blame our smart speakers listening on our conversations with no permission.

The truth is, that while we engage in the digital economy, we are generating, and giving away a lot of data about ourselves. Sort of a “scent” we leave behind, that the digital hounds are ready to inspect. It And soon -if we are not there yet-, we will let off so much data about ourselves, that it will be potentially possible to build a very close model of our us, of our own behavior. This same idea, when applied to buildings, factories, or airports, is what very fancily has been named a “Digital Twin”. One based on your own data, could be used to predict your every move.

When investing, there is a meme that describes market behavior in terms of the different mindset of people who engage in a particular asset. The first wave is -suitingly- the early adopters. These people usually know something. They are either an insider to the company, the industry, or they are a visionary recognizing a trend. They come in early, and after some time, when they feel they have received enough reward for their original investment, they get out, or -at least- scale back a bit.

At that point, the trend is recognized and now a better-funded group follows. This is what they call “the smart money”. These include institutional investors, with big wallets, and who usually know where to put their capital to work. Eventually, these folks also get their reward, and also pull out.

Then the “late adopters” or the “dumb money” comes in. Some times, these are the people that get stuck with their investment when the smart money guys pull the rug from under their feet.

You may have seen that technology adoption also follows a similar pattern and you may have also picked up on the trend of me talking more and more about Exponential trends. This is a topic that I have become increasingly interested in.

This topic used to be the exclusive area of visionary futurists like Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPrize and Singular University, and Salim Ismail, former Chief Innovation Officer for Yahoo and founder of Open ExO.

But lately, another trend has been developing. Last week, I heard, not one, but TWO hedge fund managers talking either about “The Exponential Age” or the “Age of Abundance”.

In my experience, when the hedge funds start rattling on something, it is time to pay attention, it may be fairly close.

If you are interested in getting the details on these, checkout these two videos:

Raoul Pál – Former Goldman Sachs executive and founder and CEO of Real Vision

Jordi Visser, president and CIO of Weiss Multi-Strategy Advisers, interviewing tech visionary, Sultan Meghji, CEO and co-founder of Frontier Foundry

TLDR;

The world is about to shift. Again. Some technologies that are coming down the pike will deliver a shift as big as the splitting of the atom. Some resources are about to become very abundant, and the world will shift from offering scarce resources, to managing abundance.

Making a movie recommendation on a Monday is almost like talking about cocktails at 10 AM, but here I am, doing what I am not supposed to.

If you haven’t seen “A million miles away” on Amazon Prime Video, it is a deeply inspirational movie, with a story of struggle and persistence. The movie is an adaptation of José Hernandez’ book, “Reaching for the Stars”, where he tells the story of how he went from being the son of migrant workers from Michoacán,, to be the first Hispanic to get in orbit

The story brought some memories to me when it gets to Livermore, CA; where the late Bill Soto -probably the best sales person I have ever met- and I worked together at the headquarters of Intellicom, Inc. The story is divided in sections, in what I think is the basic entrepreneurial and strategic process, it goes more or less like this:

• Know where you are going
• Find where you are in the process
• Figure out how far are you from your goal
• If you don’t know how to get there, learn
• Work hard towards your goal
• Once you think you arrived, you will probably have to work some more

Fairly simple. With all the credit that it deserves, Hernandez’ journey, is one of being selected. Without spoiling anything about the movie, he has to apply many times before he is accepted in NASA’s space program. And the thing with this type of process, is that they tell you when you failed, but the also tell you when you succeeded, and once you did, you still have to work hard, but there is someone there to guide you. This is the one difference with the entrepreneurial process. You will know for sure every time you’ll fail, but success doesn’t come in one big moment. Many times, it comes in drips, and you’ll have to recognize it. Small successes that build upon each other, and most of the time, there is still no one there to guide you.

Enjoy the movie!

When I decided to pause The Daily PPILL sometime in Summer, I was hoping to restart it gently once Fall would hit us.

It happens to be that restarting something can be almost as hard as getting it going in the first place. We have all kinds of questions in our heads. Questions like, should I change the writing? Is it good enough? Can I just wait a little more and line up a few topics?

After the extraordinary experience of last night, I have no more excuses, I am breaking the silence.

I have to.

Last night, we went to see Coldplay, and it was great. The opening act was wonderful as well. H.E.R. as an opening act? The tickets were definitely not cheap, but worth it.

Some say, that what we pay for when we go watch an artist, is to see a human being in a state of flow. In that perfect zone where they are just taken away from what they are, and they become purely what they do. That’s exactly what we saw. You could see how the whole band was enjoying the concert just as much -or even more- than the audience. No wonder they can consistently deliver outstanding and deeply moving performances. Going above and beyond what they are asked to do, every time they play, and enjoying it. I am pretty sure they get paid handsomely, but I don’t think that’s why they showed up for work on a Wednesday evening.

So for the rest of us, what’s left? Is there a way we could get everybody in a state of flow, have them deliver outstanding results AND enjoy it? And how would the world look like if this was possible? A happier world? With unparalleled progress?

Lighting Up 58,000 Souls in Harmony

There was another remarkable thing we experienced.

Chris Martin, Coldplay’s lead singer is an artful crowd commander. He is capable of getting 58,000 individuals to sing a particular tune, at whim. While Martin is especially gifted in this skill, engaging the audience, hitting a chord in their emotions, and making them participate in a collective experience, this is something that great artists have always been able to do.

But there was something more.

Before the show, the band handed out thousands of illuminating bracelets. These light up on command, in color. The spectacle included some clever ways of lighting up the stadium with these colors, but the most beautiful to me was when they would allow all lights to come up, in a random color. Each light, was one wrist, one person, one soul in the audience. And just as the artist would connect with each individual in their own way, their light would also come up in one color. I just couldn’t ignore the metaphor.

Some version of this technology is available today everywhere. Many of us wear smartwatches and we got IoT devices everywhere. Cannot wait until we start using these for expressing feelings.

Have a great Thursday!

The topic that is occupying my mind lately, is the nature of exponentials and how they play into business. I am working on some long form content, which makes it hard to publish my regular Daily PPILL while I also take care of business. But I thought, why not dig up some of my favorite posts? Here is another one:

There is an awesome quote by no one else but Gandhi: 

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values, your values become your destiny.”

(BTW, I feel like only Gandhi can pull off such a run-off sentence without half the audience nodding off).

As a professional manager or marketer, we are in the business of changing behavior. I have always tried not to forget this, especially when we are asked to hit a goal (a “destiny”).

In our increasingly results-driven society, we may be tempted to give in and accept that we must promise to produce an outcome, to hit the metric, when in reality, to effect lasting change, we just have to follow some version of Gandhi’s advice. Brainstorm, innovate, spell it out, and communicate it; put products, services, and marketing campaigns behind it, and then, incentivize the behavior. Create new habits. Sustain that cycle enough, and those habits will become ingrained deep enough to turn into values, which will generate lasting results. 

The shortcut’s life is short.