e-Commerce – Page 3 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Tag: e-Commerce

Lessons from China – WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media

Posted on August 31, 2016 in Implementation, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“In one country, 90 percent of adults use mobile money to conduct commercial transactions” – previous 60 Minutes report: “M-Pesa, the Future of Money”.

That country is Kenya on the African continent. That penetration rate – 90% – was believed to be one of the highest acceptance rate in any large country.

And now we are learning about the business model of WeChat … in China …

… it is a Social Media SuperApp, messaging and digital assistant with an electronic payment functionality similar to M-Pesa. This is the Smartphone answer to a basic phone’s utilitarianism.

See the story in the VIDEO here and the encyclopedic reference that follows:

VIDEO – How China Is Changing Your Internet – http://nyti.ms/2bhgH5s

Posted August 9, 2016 – What was once known as the land of cheap rip-offs may now offer a glimpse of the future — and American companies are taking notice. By JONAH M. KESSEL and PAUL MOZUR. Photo by Damir Sagolj/Reuters.
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Reference Title: WeChat

WeChat (literal translation: “micro message”) is a cross-platform instant messaging service developed by Tencent in China, first released in January 2011.^[10] It is one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active users.^[11][12]

The app is available on Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone and Symbian phones. Web-based OS X^[13] and Windows^[14] clients also exist; these however require the user to have the app installed on a supported mobile phone for authentication, and neither message roaming nor ‘Moments’ are provided.^[15] As of May 2016, WeChat has over a billion created accounts, 700 million active users;^[16] with more than 70 million outside of China (as of December 2015).^[17][18]

WeChat provides text messaging, hold-to-talk voice messaging, broadcast (one-to-many) messaging, video conferencing, video games, sharing of photographs and videos, and location sharing.^[19][20] It can exchange contacts with people nearby via Bluetooth, as well as providing various features for contacting people at random if desired (if these are open to it), next to integration with social networking services such as those run by Facebook and Tencent QQ.^[21] Photographs may also be embellished with filters and captions, and a machine translation service is available.

For work purposes, companies and business communication, a special version of WeChat called Enterprise WeChat (or Qiye Weixin) was launched in April 2016. The app is meant to help employees separate work from private life.^[22] Except the usual chat features, the program lets companies and their employees keep track of annual leave days and expenses that need to be reimbursed, employees can ask for time off or even clock in to show they are at work.^[22][23] Security has been upgraded and companies must register before their employees can use the service.^[24][25]

Security concerns
WeChat operates from China under Chinese law, which includes strong censorship provisions and interception protocols.^[51] WeChat contains the ability to access the text messages and contact books of its users and users’ locations through the GPS feature.^[51] Countries and regions such as India, the United States, China and Taiwan all fear that the app poses a threat to national or regional security for various reasons.^[51][52][53] In Taiwan, legislators were concerned that the potential exposure of private communications was a threat to regional security.^[51] In June 2013, the Indian Intelligence Bureau flagged WeChat for security concerns. India has debated whether or not they should ban WeChat for its possibility in collecting too much personal information and data from its users.^[53][54][55]Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved August 30, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WeChat

This push for emergence of Internet & Communications Technologies is a familiar advocacy for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book identifies a possible universe of 130 million active users; this is huge from a Caribbean perspective, but actually small compared to other source countries. The book detailed the full inventory of global Social Media sites around the words with greater than 100 million active users as of November 2013. See the list here:

Rank	Name	Registered users	Active user accounts	Date of stat	Date launched	Country of origin
1	Facebook	1+ billion	1 billion	October 2012	February 2004	United States
2	Tencent QQ	784+ million	712 million	September 2012	2003	China
3	Skype	663+ million	280 million	January 2013	August 2003	Estonia
4	Google+	500+ million	235 million	December 2012	June 2011	United States
5	Twitter	500+ million	200+ million	December 2012	March 2006	United States
6	LinkedIn	200+ million	160 million	January 2013	May 2003	United States
7	Tencent Qzone	597 million	150 million	September 2012	2005	China
8	Sina Weibo	400+ million	100+ million	February 2013	August 2009	China
9	Dropbox	100+ million	100 million	November 2012	September 2008	United States
10	Windows Live	100 million	100 million	December 2012	November 2005	United States
11	Instagram	100+ million	100 million	February 2013	October 2010	United States

Notice that 3 of these 11 sites are based in China. (WeChat is a product from China-based Tencent; see Appendix).

This commentary completes the series on China; this is commentary 6 of 6 in consideration of the good and bad lessons from China. The other commentaries detailed in this series are as follows:

History of China Trade: Too Big to Ignore
Why China will soon be Hollywood’s largest market
Organ Transplantation: Facts and Fiction
Mobile Game Apps: The new Playground
South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones
WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media – www.MyCaribbean.gov

All of these commentaries relate to nation-building, stressing the community investments required to facilitate the short-term, mid-term and long-term needs of our communities. This last commentary admires how the China-based WeChat online product is all-encompassing for all daily activities, facilitating value-added experiences for its users. It brings the benefits of the virtual world to the real world.

The WeChat experience in China is unique in that access is blocked from foreign access – no inputs nor outputs; this is referred to as the Great Firewall of China. (See more details here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/technology/china-homegrown-internet-companies-rest-of-the-world.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1).

So the lesson for the Caribbean is how to regulate technology in our society. With the Great Firewall and all the security threats, we do not want to invite WeChat to the Caribbean region. Rather we want to model WeChat for our own homegrown Social Media product, identified in the Go Lean book as www.myCaribbean.gov, (but without the Great Firewall features).

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) as regional stewards of Cyberspace and the economy, or better stated: electronic commerce. e-Commerce will drive change in payment systems, to include options depicted in the foregoing VIDEO.

The CU oversight is to be executed in conjunction with the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU), the administrator of the www.myCaribbean.gov Social Media site and network. The purpose of the CPU charter is the efficient and effective facilitation of postal mail and messaging. To be consequential in 2016, no postal initiative can launch without an online/email solution. This implementation is embedded in the Go Lean roadmap, as detailed here in the book on Page 108:

The CU will include e-delivery of government operations so as to integrate and consolidate services that are usually a cost center. The resultant economies-of-scale will result in Postal operations (CPU) emerging as a logistics Profit Center rather than Cost Center.
…
Cyber Mail Assistance (First Leg & Last Leg)
E-mail is a reality that should be embraced. The CPU will coordinate and collaborate with the www.myCaribbean.gov portal to offer email to all 42 million citizens, [10 million Diaspora and 80 million visitors]. The CPU will offer products, for a fee, like “last leg” postal mail for emails that need to be delivered on paper, or “first leg” postal for paper mail that can be scanned and delivered as email.

The CU, CPU and CCB are all organs of the new Caribbean elevation initiative. The CCB will facilitate transactions settlement for the new payment eco-system. The Go Lean roadmap calls for a regional currency for the Caribbean Single Market, the Caribbean Dollar (C$), to be used primarily as an electronic currency. This scheme will impact the growth of the regional economy in both the domestic and tourist markets. Economic growth is only one of the objectives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap; in fact, the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

To be counted on the world stage, the Caribbean region must conquer Cyberspace – for our own people – to elevate the interactions among the business and consumer virtual communities. When we say interactions, we mean payment transactions as well.

The benefits are undeniable: instant access, safer transactions, expanded networks, and an expanded money supply.

This last one, expanded money supply refers to the feature in Economics of M1. Electronic payment schemes causes a shift in the measurement of M1 and M0. M0 refers to the “cash currency” (paper notes & coins); M1 refers to the measurement of overnight bank deposits plus the “cash” in circulation (the M0). The Go Lean book explains the money multiplier effect, how M1 increases allow central banks – in this case, the CCB – to create money “from thin-air”.

A mission of the Go Lean roadmap is to prepare the Caribbean region to adapt and thrive in the new global marketplace. This goal requires strenuous currency management and technocratic oversight of the region’s technological initiatives. This need was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the proper guidance for the deployment of an advanced Social Media network (and accompanying e-Payments scheme) in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Principle	Page 22
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 35
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the monetary needs through a Currency Union	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Facilitate modern communications with postal enhancements	Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Central Banking	Page 73
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Operations: CPU	Page 78
Implementation – Assemble Central Bank Cooperative	Page 96
Implementation – Assemble Caribbean Regional Organs – like CTU	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Improve Mail Services – CPU Deployments	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #2: Currency Union / Single Currency	Page 127
Anecdote – Caribbean Currencies	Page 149
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets – Benefit of e-Payments	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism – e-Payment scheme	Page 193
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations – Central Banking Efficiencies	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Downtown Wi-Fi – Time and Place	Page 201
Appendix – Assembling the Caribbean Telecommunications Union – As Regulator	Page 256

As depicted in the foregoing VIDEO and these previously Go Lean blog-commentaries, those involved in retail commerce – in general – must now adapt to this new electronic commerce/payment world … or perish:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7297	Death of the ‘Department Store’: Exaggerated or Eventual
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Money – M-Pesa Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635	New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5668	Move over Mastercard/Visa… here comes a Caribbean Solution
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Cash, Credit or iPhone …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	Caribbean banks are ready to accept electronic payments transactions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488	Chinese Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2074	MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon – Role Model for Caribbean e-Commerce & Logistics
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin needs regulatory framework to change ‘risky’ image of payments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528	Facebook plans to provide mobile payment services

The world of Social Media networking and electronic payment systems is here. China has demonstrated a successful model for us in the Caribbean to emulate.

The lesson from China is that a low-technical population can assimilate high-tech solutions, provided that solutions are real. China has a population of 1.3 billion people; WeChat has 700 million active users. All those people cannot be “Geeks”. Many are just plain folks, the sort that comprise the 42 million in the Caribbean.

And then imagine the “Geeks”; imagine the opportunities: jobs and entrepreneurship. Imagine…

The lesson from China is that the business axiom is true:

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

This gives us confidence that the Caribbean Social Media network, www.myCaribbean.gov, can be fully accepted in the marketplace.

Yes, this Go Lean roadmap is conceivable, believable and achievable. The benefits are too enticing to ignore: fostering more e-Commerce, increasing M1, growing the economy, creating jobs, enhancing security and optimizing governance. Now is the time for all stakeholders – people and businesses – of the Caribbean to lean-in to this roadmap. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix VIDEO – Preview WeChat for Android – https://youtu.be/y2uRA9qji_I

Published on Apr 25, 2016 – WeChat is a free messaging & calling app used by 700 million people that allows you to easily connect with family & friends across countries. It’s the all-in-one communications app for free text (SMS/MMS), voice & video calls, Moments, photo sharing, and games.

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China, e-Commerce, ICT, Jobs, Model

ENCORE: Lesson from MetroCard

Posted on August 18, 2016 in Economics, Planning

They got me … too!

This is not a warning; this is an applause!

Even after describing the MetroCard program’s propensity for retaining unused balances – in the ENCORE below – this writer ends up stuck with 2 active MetroCards with outstanding balances.

Rather than feeling suckered, I feel impressed. (It means “free” cash from the idle balances).

See the story from August 20, 2014 again here, how the MetroCard program always ends up divesting leftover balances. (Note: The all-electronic payment scheme does allow for refunds, using an Old World, snail-mail process with self-addressed-pre-stamped envelopes). Also see the VIDEO in the new Appendix below on how to purchase a MetroCard.

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Go Lean Commentary: MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar

The MetroCard, the New York City Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) payment system is the subject of the referenced source appendix below. But this subject is about more than just simple bus/subway tokens, instead this subject refers to a whole eco-system that constitutes an electronic payment scheme. This system generates $4 billion (2012) and services the transit needs of 15.1 million people. The MTA drives the NYC regional economy, the largest in the US, facilitating the connection for many to traverse from home to work; then after work, the MTA network enables the NYC metropolitan area (New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut) to get to a host of leisure activities: music, theater, cultural events, sports, and shopping. MetroCard is therefore a de facto currency for this region to live, work and play.

MetroCard is a digital currency and not “hard money”, so there are not paper stock or coinage issues to be managed with this approach. (MetroCard replaced the previous ubiquitous tokens in 2003). This attribute relates to the effort to re-boot and optimize the Caribbean regional economy and society. The book Go Lean…Caribbean points to NYC as a model and source of many lessons that the Caribbean can learn and apply, especially related to the adoption of the regional currency, the Caribbean Dollar (C$).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). This Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Caribbean Central Bank has the role of heavy-lifting in the facilitation of the electronic payments modes of the Caribbean Dollar. While the traditional central banking role of currency/coinage distribution do not come into play, with the e-Payment schemes, there are still many responsibilities and benefits for central bank command-and-control. This refers to the subject of M1 monetary supply. M1 refers to the measurement of the total of currency/money in circulation (M0) plus overnight bank deposits (like demand deposits, travelers’ checks & other checkable deposits). So when digit currencies, as MetroCard, are factored in, there is no M0, but an increase in M1. As M1 values increase, there is a dynamic in the regional banking system that creates money “from thin-air”; this is referred to as the money multiplier. The more M1 money in the system, the more liquidity for investment and development opportunities.

The Caribbean needs this increase in development capital/liquidity.

This subject of electronic payment systems has been previously covered in Go Lean blogs, highlighted here in the following samples:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin needs regulatory framework to change ‘risky’ image
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528	Facebook plans to provide mobile payment services
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360	How to Create Money from Thin Air

This Go Lean/CU/CCB roadmap looks to employ electronic payments / virtual money schemes to impact the growth of the regional economy. There are two CU schemes that relate to this MetroCard structure:

Cruise Passenger Smartcards – The Go Lean roadmap posits that the cruise industry needs the Caribbean more than the Caribbean needs the industry. But the cruise lines have embedded rules/regulations designed to maximize their revenues at the expense of the port-side establishments. The CU solution is to deploy a scheme for smartcards that function on the ships and at the port cities (Page 193).
e-Commerce Facilitation – The Go Lean roadmap defines that the Caribbean Dollar (C$) will be mostly cashless, an accounting currency. So the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) will settle all C$ electronic transactions (MasterCard-Visa style or ACH style) and charge interchange/clearance fees (Page 198). This scheme allows for the emergence of full-throttle e-Commerce activities.

Overall, stewardship of the single market economy and single regional currency was envisioned and pronounced early in the Go Lean roadmap with this Verse XXIV (Page 13) of the Declaration of Interdependence, with these words:

Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles…

New York City is a great model for this Caribbean empowerment effort to look, listen, and learn. The same as tourism is the primary economic driver in the Caribbean (80 million visitors), NYC also plays host to 25 million visitors annually. Many NYC tourists ride the MTA public transportation modes and have to acquire a MetroCard – many times, they leave unspent balances to just sit there. What becomes of those monies? See this news article here:

Unspent MetroCard Money Means Millions for M.T.A.

(http://www.nyctransitforums.com/forums/topic/43954-unspent-metrocard-money-means-millions-for-mta/)

Think of it as New York’s biggest sock drawer, except that instead of nickels, dimes and quarters, what is squirreled away in its dark recesses are millions of lapsed yellow-and-blue MetroCards with digital loose change still dangling from their magnetic strips.

In the decade ending in 2010, nearly $500 million worth of unspent balances on expired bus and subway MetroCards accumulated, and that money can no longer be redeemed.

Cards that are bought, never used but still valid are counted for bookkeeping purposes as a liability, because they might eventually be used. Outdated cards with pending balances become an asset after they expire, about two years from the date of sale. The balances are listed as revenue under the category of “fare media liability.”

Tens of millions of dollars a year may not seem like much out of $4 billion in annual MetroCard revenue for New York City Transit, but there is no stream of cash that the agency scoffs at.

Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which includes the transit agency, said: “Expired card value does benefit the M.T.A. It gets counted as fare box revenue.”

The peak year for replenishing New York City Transit’s fare media liability account was 2012, when $95 million was credited. That followed a surge in purchases in 2010, before a fare increase. Those cards, many presumably with outstanding balances, have expired.

Considering the governance for the MetroCard, the MTA has been described with some adjectives of efficiency and effectiveness. Their website described their charter as follows:

While nearly 85 percent of the nation’s workers need automobiles to get to their jobs, four of every five rush-hour commuters to New York City’s central business districts avoid traffic congestion by taking transit service – most of it operated by the MTA. MTA customers travel on America’s largest bus fleet and on more subway and rail cars than all the rest of the country’s subways and commuter railroads combined.

This mobility helps ensure New York’s place as a world center of finance, commerce, culture, and entertainment, and New York ranks near the top among the nation’s best cities for business, Fortune magazine has written, because it has “what every city desires. A workable mass transit system.”

MTA mass transit helps New Yorkers avoid about 17 million metric tons of pollutants while emitting only 2 million metric tons, making it perhaps the single biggest source of greenhouse gas (GHG) avoidance in the United States. The people living in our service area lead carbon-efficient lives, making New York the most carbon-efficient state in the nation.

Over the past two decades, the MTA has committed some $72 billion to restore and improve the network so that today it runs at unprecedented levels of efficiency. Our employees at all of our agencies work diligently to maintain high service and safety standards.

(Source: Retrieved August 19, 2014 from: http://web.mta.info//mta/network.htm)

The governance for the MetroCard may be in good hands, a technocratic reflection. Creating a technocratic CU/CCB governance is “Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap. Implementing this allows for rock-solid monetary integrity for local financial systems, providing the foundation so the regional society can be elevated, economically and governmentally. In this vein, we examine specific lessons & applications in consideration of the MetroCard business model in the Appendix below:

MetroCard Facts	Go Lean *book considerations/reflections (actual Page* Numbers)**
MetroCard History	Roadmap with Project Delivery Obligations (Page 109); Fostering a Technocracy (Page 64)
Multiple Jurisdictions	Confederation of 30 Member-States (Page 45); Fostering Interstate Commerce (Page 129)
Pricing/Cost Increases	Unified Command & Control on Inflation (Page 153)
Technology	Foster Technology (Page 197); e-Commerce (Page 198); Bridging Digital Divide (Page 31)
Transfers	People respond to economic incentives (Page 21)
Card type consideration – Pay-Per-Ride cards	Improve M1 by encouraging stored balances (Page 198)
Card type consideration – Student cards	Facilitation Education (Page 159) and Transportation (Page 205)
Card type consideration – Disabled/Senior Citizens	Improve Elder-Care (Page 225) and Impact Persons with Disabilities (Page 228)
Purchase Options – Subway Station Booths	Manage Federal Civil Servants (Page 173)
Purchase Options – Vending Machines	Foster Technology (Page 197); e-Commerce (Page 198); Bridging Digital Divide (Page 31)
Purchase Options – Neighborhood Merchants	Help Entrepreneurship (Page 28); Impact Main Street (Page 201);
Future	Impact the Future (Page 26)
Bad Actors: Fraud/Scams	Bad Actors Emerge – Reduce Crime (Page 178); Impact the Greater Good (Page 37)

The Go Lean book details additional community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster electronic payment systems, and the unified command & control necessary for its success:

Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Principle	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Central Banking	Page 73
Implementation – Assemble Central Bank Cooperative	Page 96
Planning – Lessons Learned from New York City	Page 137
Anecdote – Caribbean Currencies	Page 149
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Public Works	Page 175
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living	Page 234
Appendix – New York City Economy Details	Page 277

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. We can all benefit by studying and modeling the successes of New York City!

Any visitor to the city quickly realizes how unique this jurisdiction is compared to other urban areas in the US, or the world for that matter. Millions of people (31,483,000 according to 2010 census) live in a limited congested area that is the Greater Tri-State area, yet there is a recognizable level of efficiency – some technocratic deliveries. For example, NYC does not have the proliferation of yellow school buses that dot the landscape of most American communities. Most students in the city rely on the MTA, funded by their MetroCard, to get back and forth for school. So in effect, MetroCard services the full community needs to live, work, learn and play.

MetroCard is truly a model for the Caribbean … Dollar.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix – Reference Source:

MetroCard – New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Payment System

The MetroCard is the payment method for the New York City Subway rapid transit system; New York City Transit buses, including routes operated by Atlantic Express under contract to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA); MTA Bus, and Nassau Inter-County Express systems; the PATH subway system (an entity of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey); the Roosevelt Island Tram; AirTrain JFK; and Westchester County’s Bee-Line Bus System.

The MetroCard is a thin, plastic card on which the customer electronically loads fares. It was introduced to enhance the technology of the transit system and eliminate the burden of carrying and collecting tokens. The MTA discontinued the use of tokens in the subway on May 3, 2003, and on buses on December 31, 2003. The MetroCard is managed by a division of the MTA known as MetroCard Operations and manufactured by Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc.

History

01Jun1993	MTA distributes 3,000 MetroCards in the first major test of the technology for the entire subway system and the entire bus system.
06Jan1994	MetroCard live testing with compatible turnstiles at select lines and stations.
15May1997	The last MetroCard turnstiles were installed by this date, and the entire bus and subway system accepted MetroCards
04Jul1997	First free transfers available between bus and subway at any location with MetroCard.
01Jan1998	Bonus free rides (10% of the purchase amount) were given for purchases of $15 or more.
04Jul1998	Unlimited Ride MetroCards introduced, at $17 for 7 days, $63 for 30 days, Express Bus Plus for $120.
01Jan1999	1-Day Fun Pass was introduced: unlimited use for one day for $4.
25Jan1999	The first MetroCard Vending Machines installed.
13Apr2003	Tokens/coins no longer sold.
04May2003	Tokens only accepted as a $1.50 credit towards the $2 MetroCard ride.
02Mar2008	A new 14-day unlimited-ride was introduced for $47
30Dec2010	1-Day Fun Pass and the 14-Day Unlimited Ride MetroCards discontinued.
20Feb2013	Cards can now be refilled with both time and value.
03Mar2013	A $1 fee is imposed on new card purchases in-system

Pricing/Cost increases – since the complete cut-over in 2003

Date	Daily	Weekly	Monthly
04May2003	$2	$21	$70
27Feb2005	$2	$24	$76
02Mar2008	$2	$25	$81
28Jun2009	$2.25	$27	$89
30Dec2010	$2.25	$29	$104
19Dec2012	$2.50	$30	$104

Technology

During a swipe, the MetroCard is read, re-written to, then check-read to verify correct encoding.

Each MetroCard stored value card is assigned a unique, permanent ten-digit serial number when it is manufactured. The value is stored magnetically on the card itself, while the card’s transaction history is held centrally in the Automated Fare Collection (AFC) Database.

When a card is purchased and fares are loaded onto it, the MetroCard Vending Machine or station agent’s computer stores the amount of the purchase onto the card and updates the database, identifying the card by its serial number. Whenever the card is swiped at a turnstile, the value of the card is read, the new value is written, the customer is let through, and then the central database is updated with the new transaction as soon as possible. Cards are not validated in real time against the database when swiped to pay the fare. The AFC Database is necessary to maintain transaction records to track a card if needed. It has actually been used to acquit criminal suspects by placing them away from the scene of a crime. The database also stores a list of MetroCards that have been invalidated for various reasons (such as lost or stolen student or unlimited monthly cards), and it distributes the list to turnstiles in order to deny access to a revoked card.

MetroCard keeps track of the number of swipes at a location in order to allow those same number of people to transfer at a subsequent location, if applicable. The MetroCard system was designed to ensure backward compatibility, which allowed a smooth transition from the old (blue) format to the (gold) format.

Cubic later on used the proprietary MetroCard platform to create the Chicago Card, which is physically identical to the MetroCard except for the labeling.

Transfers

MetroCards allows for transfers (within two hours of initial entry) among the many transportation modes – incentivizing a preferred behavior. (Pricing rules are built into the system for upgrades like Express Buses, PATH, and JFK Airport AirTrain).

One free transfer from:

subway to local bus
bus to subway
bus to local bus
express bus to express bus
bus or subway to Staten Island Railway
subway to subway

Card type – consideration – Pay-Per-Ride MetroCards

$5 – $80 initial value in any increment (though vending machines only sell values in multiples of 5 cents).
Card purchases or refills equal to or greater than $5 receive a 5% bonus (ex. $50 buys 21 rides).
Cards can be refilled up to $80 in one transaction and up to a total value of $100.
Though cards expire, the balance may be transferred to a new cards.

Card type – consideration – Student MetroCards: NYC does not have the propensity of yellow school business as other communities, therefore a partnership is forged between school districts and MTA.

MetroCards are issued to some New York City public and private school students allowing discounted access to the NYC Transit buses and trains, depending on the distance traveled between their school and their home. The card program is managed by the NYC-DOE Office of Pupil Transportation.
In Nassau County, Student MetroCards are issued by individual schools which have pre-paid for the cards.

Card type – consideration – Disabled/Senior Citizen Reduced-Fare MetroCards

Given to senior citizens and the disabled as a combination photo ID and MetroCard.
Allows half-fare within the MTA system. (Express Bus during off-peak hours only)
Half fare is also available on the 7-day and 30-day Unlimited MetroCards.
Card back is color-coded to match gender of card holder.
Card face is marked as “Photo ID Pass”

Purchase options

All new MetroCard purchases are charged a $1 fee, except reduced fare customers and those exchanging damaged / expired cards.

Subway Station Booths

Booths are located in all subway stations and are staffed by station agents. Every type of MetroCard can be purchased at a booth with the exception of the SingleRide ticket, and MetroCards specific to other transit systems (PATH, JFK Airtrain). All transactions must be in cash.

MetroCard Vending Machines

MetroCard Vending Machines (MVMs) are machines located in all subway stations and transit centers. They debuted on January 25, 1999 and are now found in two models. Standard MVMs are large vending machines that accept cash, credit cards, and debit cards and are in every subway station. Cash transactions are required for purchases of less than $1, and they can return up to $8 in coin change. There are also smaller versions of these machines that only accept credit and ATM/debit cards. Both machines allow a customer to purchase any type of MetroCard through a touch screen. The MVM can also refill to previously issued cards. PATH fare vending machines can also dispense MetroCards.

The machines are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 through use of braille and a headset jack.

Neighborhood MetroCard Merchants

MetroCards can be sold by retail merchants not affiliated with MTA. Vendors can apply to sell MTA fare media at their businesses. Only presealed, prevalued cards are available, and no fee is charged.

Future

In 2006 the MTA and Port Authority of NY/NJ announced plans to replace the magnetic strip with smart cards.

On July 1, 2006, MTA launched a six-month pilot program to test the new “contact-less” smart card fare collection system, initially ending on December 31, 2006 but extended until May 31, 2007. This program was tested at all stations on the IRT Lexington Avenue Line and at four stations in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens. The testing system utilized Citibank MasterCard’s PayPass keytags. This smart card system is intended to ease congestion near the fare control area by reducing time spent at paying for fare. MTA and other transportation authorities in the region say they will eventually implement system-wide.

Beginning October 7, 2012, MetroCard vending machines scattered throughout Manhattan dispensed something other than the classic blue and gold MetroCard. The MTA has begun to sell advertisement space on the front and back of the card to raise additional revenue. The 2012 ad appearing on the cards was purchased by The Gap [retail stores] and reads: “Be Bright NYC” with multicolored letters on a navy blue background. It encourages New Yorkers to visit Gap’s newly remodeled flagship store at 34th Street and Broadway starting October 10, 2012. Customers who present the MetroCard at any Gap store were entitled to a 20% discount on merchandise purchases through November 18, 2012. The MTA has been running advertisements on the back of MetroCards since its inception, earning advertiser fees along with expired card value (accruing when purchased fares wind up not being used on a card deemed a collectible by fans). Deals were arranged as early as 1997. However, this Gap deal is the first time the front of the cards have changed in over 10 years. Approximately 10% of the MetroCards sold throughout the system in a typical month will carry the Gap advertising. Future MetroCard advertising campaigns will include the word “MetroCard” on the back of the card, flush right in the white space above the zone available for advertising.

Bad Actors: Fraud and Scams

The MetroCard system is susceptible to various types of frauds, perpetrated by con artists. Usually these frauds involve the con artist preventing or dissuading the commuter from using his or her own MetroCard, and then charging the commuter for entry to the system (entry is gained by a method that costs the con artist nothing).

Also, MetroCard Vending Machines are programmed to disable the bill or coin acceptor after a series of rejected bills or coins, which can result in a row of MVMs all saying “No Bills” or “No Coins”.

If a con artist is not using a stolen or broken card, he or she can use an array of unlimited cards. Multiple cards are needed because of the 18-minute delay between each swipe at the same station. Using unlimited cards, a con artist is able to sell rides for $1 instead of $2.

A report from New York State Senator Martin J. Golden claims this scam is costing the MTA $260,000 a year, and some con artists are making up to $800 a day executing it. All aspects of this scam have been recently prohibited by MTA policy and a New York State law.

The introduction of MetroCards did eliminate one class of criminals. When the NYC subway still used tokens, token suckers would steal tokens by jamming turnstile coin slots, waiting for unsuspecting passengers to deposit tokens (only to discover that the turnstile did not work), then returning to suck out the token. The retirement of tokens in 2003 put the token suckers out of commission.

The MetroCard does have a magnetic stripe, but both the track offsets and the encoding differ from standard Magstripe cards. It is a proprietary format developed by the contractor Cubic. Off-the-shelf reader/writers for the standard cards are useless, and even hypothetically could work only with both physical and software modification. Some have had partial success decoding it using audio tape recorder heads, laptop sound cards, and custom Linux software.
Source: Wikipedia Online – encyclopedic source; retrieved 08/18/2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetroCard_(New_York_City)

——————————————-

Appendix VIDEO – Which New York City Subway MetroCard to Buy – https://youtu.be/dB05rRU0qVE

Published on Jan 23, 2015 – Should you buy a pay-per-ride or an unlimited New York City Subway MetroCard? Watch this video for tips on which to buy and how to buy them at the vending machines. Check out the full article on Free Tours by Foot’s website at http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/how-to…

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UberEverything in Africa

Posted on June 19, 2016 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

UPDATED August 29, 2020 – Uber Technologies Inc. continues to change the Old World [economy] to a new world [economy]. This car-sharing service has already rankled taxi-limo companies and cabbies across the world, and now they are setting their sights on other industries.

They have dubbed this advance into diverse businesses as UberEverything. See the detailed news story / product announcement here of this launch in Africa, published by Quartz Africa – see Appendix:

Title: Uber Africa will diversify beyond car rides this year with its ‘Everything’ service
By: Yomi Kazeem

Having nearly perfected the business of moving people around on the continent, Uber is set to diversify the core of its business in sub Saharan Africa with the introduction of UberEverything, a division of the company with ambitious plans to plug its existing drivers network into the on-demand economy and provide services such as product and food delivery and courier services.

“The first market will probably be South Africa and we are pushing to make that happen before the end of the year,” said Alon Lits, Uber’s general manager for sub-Saharan Africa.

‘Everything’ is Uber’s strategy to build on its logistics infrastructure in the cities it operates. Once the company is at scale in a city with ride passengers it can develop other services such as UberRush, a personal courier service or food delivery with UberEats,(available in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York) . “Everything we’re building is on top of a platform that already exists,” Jason Droege, head of the UberEverything division, told the Los Angeles Times last month.

With the rising popularity and adoption of e-commerce shopping and on-demand services among a growing African middle-class who live on-the-go and increasingly value convenience, UberEverything could be a hit.

Logistics have been a big challenge for e-commerce companies in African larger cities, some of which have poor road networks and other infrastructure challenges. Major local players like Konga in Nigeria and African Internet Group’s Jumia and sister company Hellofood have had to invest heavily in developing their own logistics platform to get round the weak local infrastructure.

“If things go well in South Africa, there’s no reason why we won’t bring UberEverything to more markets.” One of such markets will likely be Lagos, which Lits says Uber remains “bullish” about despite Nigeria’s struggling economy. Home to 20 million people, Lagos’ infamous traffic jams and haphazard address system make it difficult—and expensive—for delivery services to operate but could represent a big opportunity for UberEverything’s goal of providing efficient logistics using its existing drivers network.

Aided by its recent $3.5 billion funding—its single biggest investment ever— from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Uber expanded to Kampala and Accra in the last week and Lits says a launch in Dar es Salaam is imminent. This follows plans to spend $250 million on growing its market across North Africa and the Middle East.

But Uber’s operations in Africa have not been without hitches. In Cairo and Nairobi, Uber drivers have been targets of protests and, in some cases, violent attacks. In South Africa, the company was forced to provide drivers with emergency numbers and also partner with a local private security firm.

Source: Quartz Africa Weekly Brief – Posted 06/13/2016; retrieved 06/18/2016 from: http://qz.com/703087/uber-africa-is-will-diversify-beyond-car-rides-this-year-with-its-everything-service/

In a previous blog on Uber, the Go Lean commentary identified how evolutionary changes in technology and modernization affects Old World taxi businesses. Now we see how evolution is changing all businesses … everywhere.

The challenge with technology, for the taxi cab industry and many other areas of life, is one-step forward-two steps-backwards. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean which anticipates the compelling issues associated with Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) and their effect on traditional commerce. The book prepares the Caribbean region to move to the intersection of opportunity and preparation. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap accepts the tenets of ICT, that it can serve as an equalizer between big countries and small countries, or big companies and small companies. So opportunities will come to the Caribbean region as a result of the advances in technology. How will the region prepare?

First, the book asserts that before the strategies, tactics and implementations of the Go Lean roadmap can be deployed, the affected communities must first embrace a progressive community ethos. The book defines this “community ethos” as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.

The Go Lean book stresses that the current community ethos must change and the best way to motivate people to adapt their values and priorities is in response to a crisis. The roadmap recognizes this fact with the pronouncement that the Caribbean is in crisis, and that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. This ethos corresponds with the UberEverything motives. In a lot of urban communities around the world, Caribbean included, traffic is crisis-worthy. According to the foregoing article, this reality is creating business opportunities around the logistics of Uber.

The Go Lean roadmap avails these opportunities, by strategizing logistics with a regional focus. The roadmap for Caribbean logistics is also our means for delivering the mail; this is the vision for the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU). The focus of the CPU is not just postal mail, but rather all the lean technocratic activities that make up logistics. Mail requires logistics, but logistics means so much more than just mail. So we would want to model successful enterprises in this industry space, like Uber. (The Go Lean book considers the postal operation of the US Postal Service – Page 99 – and rules it null-and-void for transforming e-Commerce). Other successful enterprises that provide good examples of lean technocratic efficiency include Amazon and Alibaba.

Modeling UberEverything, the Go Lean/CU roadmap will directly employ technologically innovative products and services to impact its own prime directives, identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Uber model helps the CPU impact the economic, security and governing engines, like job creation. In the previous 2014 blog relating Uber, it was disclosed that Uber is responsible for 20,000 new jobs per month. The median income for drivers using the UberX platform, Uber’s low-cost service, is $90,000 per year in New York and more than $74,000 in San Francisco, the company said. How is this possible to make so much more money than traditional driving professionals? Uber is a sophisticated business model; one thing is Uber fully applies the laws of economics – supply and demand. Note the explanation in the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Make More $ During Times of High Demand – https://youtu.be/cHfWwnJwyOU

Professor Wolters
Published on Nov 20, 2019 – Ever wonder how Uber and other ride sharing firms calculate their prices? Or maybe how prices are made for airlines? Well to understand the pricing you need to understand what is called Dynamic Pricing, which is constantly moving prices.

Filmed in Watkinsville, GA. Copyright Mark Wolters 2019
#marketing #pricing #principlesofmarketing

Topic 4: Digital Marketing
Topic 13: Dynamic Pricing

Learn more at http://uber.com

This model is a good starting point for elevating the Caribbean. But this is heavy-lifting; notice in the foregoing article regarding the complex issues associated with Uber in terms of security and taxi-limo licensing (governance). The Go Lean roadmap conveys that heavy-lifting of logistical details are more of an investment. The community will enjoy the returns, with the optimized commerce deliveries.

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to change the entire eco-system of Caribbean logistics and resulting commerce – the interaction with postal operations. This vision is defined early in the book (Page 12 & 14) in the following pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the best practices for the logistics of the CPU and trade marketplaces in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequence of Choice Lie in Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments – ROI	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Strategy – Customers – Citizens and Member-states Governmental	Page 47
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – How to Grow the Economy to $800 Billion – Trade and Globalization	Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Implementation – Anecdote – Mail Services – USPS Dilemma	Page 99
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – Group Purchase Organizations (GPO)	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Optimize Mail Service & myCaribbean.gov Marketplace	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization	Page 119
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean – # 8 Cyber-Caribbean	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade – GPO’s	Page 128
Planning – Ways to Improve Interstate Commerce	Page 129
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Manage the Federal Civil Service	Page 173
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Transportation – Union Atlantic Turnpike	Page 205
Appendix – Network of Ferries – Model of Marine Highway System	Page 280

Issues related to the CPU business model have previously been detailed in these Go Lean commentaries, listed here:

Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future

The Future of Money

How to address high consumer prices

Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp

Net Neutrality: It matters here … in the Caribbean

Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday

Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba to America

Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone

Grenada PM Urges CARICOM on ICT

The foregoing article describes Uber’s activities in Africa. The Caribbean is now ready, willing and able …

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the CU will incubate the e-Commerce industry, forge entrepreneurial incentives and facilitate the regional logistics so that innovations can thrive. As related in the foregoing article about impact in other regions, these efforts can elevate the economy, security and governing engines of a community.

The world is continuing to change; and ‘change’ is bringing great new opportunities.

We need to be prepared. This is the intersection – change and opportunity – that we need to position ourselves at. Then, only then will success is within reach. We can make the Caribbean, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

—————-

Appendix – About Quartz

Quartz is a digitally native news outlet, born in 2012, for business people in the new global economy. We publish bracingly creative and intelligent journalism with a broad worldview …

Quartz is owned by Atlantic Media Co., the publisher of The Atlantic, National Journal, and Government Executive.

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Death of the ‘Department Store’: Exaggerated or Eventual

Posted on January 27, 2016 in Economics, Implementation, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The acceptance of modern technology has transformed so many aspects of Western society. Today’s technology adds a lot to our lives … and takes a lot away, (makes obsolete). Just consider:

Appliances: camera, watch, pager, map, address book, calculator, planning-calendar, payphones, books and more.

Industries: travel agencies, music producers/retailers, book retailers, newspapers, travel agencies, Big Box retailers, etc..

Take note – This, transformative change, is perhaps happening again, this time with Department Stores. They are on a death kneel, fighting for survival.

What went wrong? What hope for survival? Can this industry be saved: reformed and transformed?

VIDEO – Are we witnessing the death of the department store? – NBC News (Retrieved 01-21-2016) – http://www.today.com/video/are-we-witnessing-the-death-of-the-department-store-605812291802 – If you loathe a trip to the mall, you might not be alone. With the rise of online shopping, many experts are now suggesting that we’re witnessing the death of department stores. TODAY’s Sheinelle Jones reports:

Department Stores are not uniquely American, (for example, London, England has the renowned Harrods’s Department Store). But the focus of this commentary is a review of the American eco-system, past, present and future. The hypothesis is simple, the lessons learned and strategies developed for application in the US can be applied elsewhere, throughout the world, and even in the Caribbean.

This industry is confronted with a lot of modern challenges. But this commentary is not an obituary of the industry, but rather a prescription on how to correct (mitigate and remediate) the inherent defects. Defects?

Technology – Online retailers are able to better compete on price, brand and quality, as long as there is deferred gratification. This is the entire business model of electronic commerce – companies (and websites) like Amazon, eBay and Alibaba – where their market capitalization (value on Wall Street) is greater than traditional companies like Coca Cola.
Competition – Factory Outlets have become “all the rage”; these ones have bred new life to older-dying malls in the inter-city. Even the manufacturers can sell directly to consumers, bypassing Department Stores.
Changing social values – Americans have become increasingly casual in its fashion-taste. Few people dress-up for work, leisure activities or even Church these days. Blue Jeans are “standard uniform attire” for young and old, men and women, even celebrities; in addition, many men – “millennials” especially – do not even know how to tie a neck-tie.

These are the agents-of-change that comprise the “present” of this Department Store industry. But if abated, the industry can boast a bright “future”. Take technology for example, the prospects of technology-aids for the retail industry are exciting. Imagine:

The “One-Two Punch” of cutting-edge e-Commerce – in the mode of Amazon – but with local store fulfillment; (i.e. order online, pick-up at the store).
Smart-phone Apps that find and reserve parking spots at the Department Store or the Shopping Mall in general.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean also focuses heavily on the future, and how to manage, monitor, and mitigate the changes that the future will bring. The acute industry transformations caused by technology, competition and “changing social values” do not have to be a death stroke for Department Stores. Change can be embraced, anticipated and cajoled.

Department Stores can easily be early adopters of innovation. (Though their prior stance was one of orthodoxy).

The Go Lean book posits that the Caribbean region must also be early adopters of innovation; that we cannot wait until our industries are at death’s door, before seeking change. This is the reality of technology; a community cannot only consume technology, but rather must create, develop and contribute to the world of innovation.

Being an early adopter of innovation can also mean jobs.

This point was pronounced early in the book with these visionary statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14):

xiii. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxviii. Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the region’s eco-systems. In fact the book identifies the prime directives of the CU with these statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

A technocratic framework is what is needed for Department Stores, and what is needed for the Caribbean. Consider how the exercise of technocratic efficiencies have been proven to help the Department Stores industry, in this research project, presented here:

Title: Can department stores compete again?
Research Project Name: Resurgence of the Department Store

Download Dare to Be Great: The Resurgence of the Department Store »

WHAT WE DID
We undertook an investigation into the future of the department store under the premise that although we keep hearing about the imminent “death of department stores,” it hasn’t happened. To learn more, we spoke with industry leaders, visited successful stores around the world, and conducted research by scanning business and trade publications. What we concluded is that there are distinct advantages for department stores in today’s business and retail climate, but bold strategies are needed to regain the competitive advantages these businesses once held.

THE CONTEXT
Many department stores currently sit on a precipice: Sales are languishing, malls are struggling, and their future existence is in question. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Exciting new strategies are emerging that capitalize on changing shopping habits and advances in technology. Department stores are uniquely positioned to lead this paradigm shift in the retail experience, a shift that consumers are already demanding. By moving forward with a bold, no-holds-barred approach, and by leveraging what made them successful to begin with, department stores not only can survive, but can thrive— and rise to the top of the retail sector once again.

THE RESULTS
On closer examination, the deck is stacked in favor of department stores. At both the regional and the national levels, department stores have tremendous access to merchandise based on their buying power. They can utilize this power to demand exclusives from designers as limited-run collaborations, exclusive product offerings, or special events.

Department stores are also major stakeholders in malls, and they have the anchor clout to push the daily, weekly, and yearly programming that is vital to driving foot traffic. The specialty stores that are their mall neighbors offer opportunities to develop corporate relationships and forge strategic alliances that result in mutually beneficial synergies.

The fact that department stores often have a significant space advantage, plus they frequently own the buildings in which they sit, provides a real opportunity. Strategic planning of the available space—combined with technology-enhanced product displays, leveraging of websites, and stocking efficiencies enables by RFID (radio frequency identification)—can reduce the amount of physical area required to showcase pure product without reducing offerings. That surplus space can then be used to provide unique guest experiences. Enormous marketing budgets can also be better leveraged.

Budget and space allocations can be shifted from pure commercial advertising to training and community outreach, strengthening department stores’ connections to their local communities and investing in employees to enhance customer service.

And in the end, the one thing shoppers can’t buy is time, which they seem to have less and less of every day. The department store can look to its roots and provide a wide selection of relevant offerings to create one-stop shopping that has a curatorial edge.

WHAT THIS MEANS
Curate products and pursue synergies to deliver the unexpected. Department stores have the power to select and curate their selection of products, to demand exclusives from designers, and to drive the creation of new products. Use this power to develop new and unexpected product synergies. Get feedback by asking customers what they want and delivering what they ask for. And consider platforms that put the customers even more in control, allowing them to “create” their own collections or online stores.

Elevate the guest experience. Department stores need to unify the virtual and physical shopping experience and truly deliver something better. STEP 1: Consistent pricing. STEP 2: Go beyond that by connecting with local communities to deliver something unique and to better understand customers. STEP 3: Remember that the shopping experience always comes first. Technology is a powerful tool, but not an end in itself.

Create a culture of customer service. To get the guest experience right, a culture in which the customer comes first is key. Again, department stores have the advantage: They can use their scale to train staff, share best practices, and deliver service and experiences smaller specialty stores couldn’t dream of. This may require a rethinking of staffing priorities. Consider dropping commissions in favor of training as a long-term investment.

Be socially responsible. Customers want to give their money to companies whose culture they respect, companies they believe share their values, and companies they feel are positive contributors to the community. This sentiment seems to be even stronger in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and in developing nations, where often cash-strapped consumers are making decisions based on what they think a company stands for. Partner with local communities to deliver value and invest in contributions to the community.

WHAT’S NEXT?
The opportunities for department stores to deliver differentiated products and experiences are plenty. The key is to think beyond the ordinary, to make the bold investment, and to gauge the results. But the true challenge will be to continually pursue daring innovations. A one-dimensional strategy isn’t going to cut it. A far-reaching, persistent, unexpected—even risky—strategy for success is what will push stores ahead of the pack. Making that push means daring to be great, and understanding that change must be constant.

The Go Lean book projects a technocratic solution for the Caribbean region: the CU Trade Federation. This CU/Go Lean roadmap estimates that the technology job-creating effect of innovative retail solutions can amount to thousands of new direct and indirect technology/logistics jobs in the region. This is just one ethos. The Go Lean roadmap was constructed with more community ethos in mind to forge change and build anticipation and excitement for technological transformative changes. The book lists samples of the community ethos, plus the execution of related strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius – Fashion and Art	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States to Create Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines	Page 46
Strategy – Mission – Exploit the benefits and opportunities of globalization	Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities	Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Improve Mail Service – Caribbean Postal Union	Page 108
Implementation – Trends in Implementing Data Centers – Creating the ‘Cloud’	Page 106
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media – Caribbean Cloud	Page 111
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber-Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Provide Clothing – Improve Fashion Merchandising	Page 163
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – e-Government & e-Delivery	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living	Page 234
Appendix – CU Job Creations	Page 257

This Go Lean roadmap calls for the heavy-lifting to transform Caribbean society. Technological change is coming … anyway; rather than fight or resist change, we all need to embrace it. The roadmap advocates getting ahead of the change, to shepherd and navigate important aspects of Caribbean life through the “seas of change”. These goals were previously featured in Go Lean blogs/commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6341	Tourism Stewardship — What’s Next? The need to Master e-Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6151	3D Printing: Here Comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5668	Move over Mastercard/Visa – The emergence of Caribbean e-Payments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5435	China Internet Policing – Model for Transforming the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5155	Transformative Tesla unveils super-battery to power homes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5034	Patents: The Guardians of Innovation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Cash, Credit or iPhone – New Trends in Retail payments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4381	Net Neutrality – This Matters … For Transformation & Innovation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4793	Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3915	Change the way you see the world; you change the world you see
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490	How One Internet Entrepreneur Can Rally a Whole Community
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3187	Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488	Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=308	CARCIP Urges Greater Innovation

The Go Lean book focuses primarily on economic issues; retail sales fit that distinction. As portrayed in the foregoing VIDEO, the future is bleak for Department Stores if they continue business-as-usual. They must reform and transform.

This analysis is a good study for the Caribbean. We, too, must reform and transform. Change has come; our business models are no longer as assured.

Who moved my cheese?

The Go Lean book offers the turn-by-turn directions of strategies, tactics and implementations so that our communities may keep pace with the agents-of-change. This is not easy; this is heavy-lifting, but this is worth the effort. Everyone in the Caribbean, institutions and individuals alike, are urged to lean-in to this roadmap for empowerment of the region’s societal engines. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean…Caribbean now!

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The Future of Money

Posted on December 9, 2015 in Economics, Industries, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Surely the Caribbean can offer more than the African country of Kenya does. Surely?!

… and yet Kenya is providing a role model for the Caribbean to emulate, that of mobile money payment systems.

Let’s play catch-up.

Benefits await the Caribbean, more so than just playing catch-up. We can empower and elevate our economy and society. Notice here how this elevation benefits Kenya – an iconic and typical Third World country – in these news VIDEOs here:

VIDEO 1 – CBS 60 Minutes Story: The Future of Money – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-future-of-money

… requires CBS All Access Subscription…

VIDEO 2 – Financial Times: Mobile money keeps Kenya economy moving – https://youtu.be/ayo-rgayDJE

Published on Mar 11, 2013 – Kenya has led Africa’s innovative and revolutionary embrace of mobile telephones, and the country’s technology sector has grown faster than all others in east Africa’s regional economic hub. Bob Collymore, chief executive of Safaricom, parent company of the mobile payment system M-Pesa, talks to Katrina Manson, east Africa correspondent.

This is a familiar advocacy for these Go Lean commentaries. The full width and breadth of electronic payments schemes have been examined, dissected and debated. The benefits are undeniable:

Instant access
Safer transactions
Expanded networks
Mitigating fees
Expanded money supply
Availing credit

Previous blog-commentaries have promoted the following as advocacies integrating technology and money:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635	New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5668	Move over Mastercard/Visa… here comes a Caribbean Solution
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Cash, Credit or iPhone …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	Caribbean regional banks are ready to accept electronic payments transactions
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2074	MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin needs regulatory framework to change ‘risky’ image of payments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528	Facebook plans to provide mobile payment services

The world is moving forward with electronic payment systems; the standard of cash registers with cash drawers have passed. Many times, establishments do not even want to accept “cash”. They want the money, but only want it electronically. Consider this photo here, it demonstrates how United Airlines – the 3^rd largest airline in the world – will not even accept “cash” for travelling passengers to pay for baggage when they check-in for their flights. They want electronic money only (credit and debit cards). This photo depicts a cash-accepting kiosk to load the cash onto a pre-paid credit card … on the spot at the terminal … at the Metropolitan Detroit International Airport (DTW) in November 2015.

Those involved in tourism commerce must now adapt or perish.

What’s more, even the standard of magnetic stripe credit cards and debit cards have passed. As depicted in the foregoing VIDEO and previously Go Lean blog-commentaries, those involved in retail commerce – in general – must now adapt (or perish) to credit and debit cards … without the card!

This means you, Caribbean merchants (hotels, restaurants, tour operators, retailers, and business establishments). The environment must now change for tourism commerce and ordinary domestic commerce. The stewardship of Caribbean economics must improve to adapt to this changing world. This is a consistent advocacy of these Go Lean blogs: to “lean-in” to better economic stewardship as detailed in the book Go Lean … Caribbean.

The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). This Go Lean roadmap depicts that these entities will drive change in payment systems, to includes options depicted in the foregoing VIDEO and beyond. Their role will include facilitating and settling transactions for new payment systems: new cards and telephony apps. The Go Lean roadmap calls for a regional currency for the Caribbean Single Market, the Caribbean Dollar (C$), to be used primarily as an electronic currency. These schemes will impact the growth of the regional economy in both the domestic and tourist markets. Consider the real scenario of Cruise Ship passenger-commerce; the solutions must be delivered here and now.

The CU/CCB roadmap anticipates these electronic payment systems from the outset of the Go Lean book; covering more than commerce, but the security and governing issues as well. In fact, the Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

As depicted in the foregoing VIDEO, there abound many security benefits with electronic payment schemes, mobile money in this case. In the field of Economics, the “cash currency” is referred to as M0. No doubt, changes for electronic payment system will reduce M0. The greatest benefit though of deploying these electronic payment scheme is the acceleration of M1 in the regional economy. While M0 refers to “cash: paper & coins”, M1 refers to the measurement of “cash” in circulation (the M0) plus overnight bank deposits. As depicted in the Go Lean book, and subsequent blog-commentaries, M1 increases allow central banks – in this case, the CCB – to create money “from thin-air”; referring to the money multiplier principle.

A final feature of M1 is that it normally does not include any Black Market activities. But with electronic payment systems, M0 reduces and M1 increases, thusly nullifying the Black Markets.

The Go Lean book posits that to adapt and thrive in the new global marketplace there must be more strenuous management and technocratic oversight of the region’s currencies. This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap; it opened with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 and 14):

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the proper controls for electronic/mobile payments in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Principle	Page 22
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the monetary needs through a Currency Union	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Central Banking	Page 73
Implementation – Assemble Central Bank Cooperative	Page 96
Implementation – Assemble Caribbean Regional Organs	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #2: Currency Union / Single Currency	Page 127
Anecdote – Caribbean Currencies	Page 149
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism – Smartcard scheme	Page 193
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations – Central Banking Efficiencies	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Downtown Wi-Fi – Time and Place	Page 201
Appendix – Assembling the Caribbean Telecommunications Union	Page 256

The world of electronic payment systems now includes smart cards, mobile payments (like “M-Pesa” in the foregoing VIDEO and apps on Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone devices). To those in the Caribbean, we admonish you:

Try and keep up!

The benefits of this new “regime” are too enticing to ignore: fostering more e-Commerce, increasing regional M1, mitigation of Black Markets, more cruise tourism spending, growing the economy, creating jobs, enhancing security and optimizing governance.

Now is the time for all stakeholders of the Caribbean, (residents, visitors, merchants, vendors, bankers, and governing institutions), to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. These empowerments can help to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book for Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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ENCORE: Thanksgiving and American Commerce – Past, Present and Amazon

Posted on November 26, 2015 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

This commentary – from December 3, 2014 – was re-distributed on the occasion of the American Holiday Thanksgiving for 2015, as it is applicable for any Thanksgiving any year. Be thankful people; be festive and most important, be safe!

———

To understand American commerce, one must learn the BIG shopping “days of the week” – Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, as follows:

Black Friday – This is the Friday following the Thanksgiving Day holiday in the US (the fourth Thursday of November). Since the early 2000’s, it has been regarded as the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, and most major retailers open very early and offer promotional sales. Black Friday is not a public holiday, but some states observe “The Day After Thanksgiving” as a holiday for state government employees, sometimes in lieu of another federal holiday such as Columbus Day.^[5] Many non-retail employees and schools have both Thanksgiving and the day after off, followed by a weekend, thereby increasing the number of potential shoppers. In 2014, $50.9 billion was spent during the 4-day Black Friday weekend. While approximately 133 million U.S. consumers shopped during the same period.^[6]
Small Business Saturday – This refers to the Saturday after Thanksgiving during one of the busiest shopping periods of the year. First observed in 2010, it is a counterpart to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which feature big box retail and e-commerce stores respectively. By contrast, Small Business Saturday encourages holiday shoppers to patronize brick-and-mortar businesses that are small and local. Small Business Saturday is a registered trademark of American Express Corporation. Small Business Saturday UK began in the UK in 2013 after the success of Small Business Saturday in America.^[7]
Cyber Monday – This is a marketing term for the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. The term was created by marketing companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled “‘Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year”.^[2] According to the Shop.org/Bizrate Research 2005 eHoliday Mood Study, “77 percent of online retailers said that their sales increased substantially on the Monday after Thanksgiving, a trend that is driving serious online discounts and promotions on Cyber Monday this year (2005)”. In 2014, Cyber Monday online sales grew to a record $2.68 billion, compared with last year’s $2.29 billion. However, the average order value was $124, down slightly from 2013’s $128.^[3] The deals on Cyber Monday are online-only and generally offered by smaller retailers that cannot compete with the big retailers. Black Friday generally offers better deals on technology; with nearly 85% more data storage deals than Cyber Monday. The past Black Fridays saw far more deals for small appliances, cutlery, and kitchen gadgets on average than Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday is larger for fashion retail. On the past two Cyber Mondays, there was an average of 45% more clothing deals than on Black Friday. There were also 50% more shoe deals on Cyber Monday than on Black Friday.^[4] Cyber Monday has become an international marketing term used by online retailers in Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Uganda, Japan, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Giving Tuesday – refers to the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. It is a movement to create a national day of giving at the beginning of the Christmas and holiday season. Giving Tuesday was started in 2012 by the “92nd Street Y” (Young Men’s and Young Women’s Hebrew Association in New York, NY) and the United Nations Foundation as a response to commercialization and consumerism in the post-Thanksgiving season (Black Friday and Cyber Monday).^[8][9] This occasion is often stylized as #GivingTuesday for purposes of hashtag activism.

That’s a lot of commerce … and philanthropy too!

This encyclopedic discussion is necessary for the Caribbean to model the best-practices of American commerce. The focus of this commentary is the role of one company in the pantheon of Cyber Monday, Amazon. This firm has previously been featured in a Go Lean blog, and is identified as a model for Caribbean logistics, our means for delivering the mail; this is the vision for the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU).

The focus of the book Go Lean…Caribbean and the CPU is not just postal mail, but rather logistics. Mail requires logistics, but logistics encompasses so much more than just mail. So we would want to model a successful enterprise in this industry space, like Amazon, not just another postal operation, like the US Postal Service (Page 99).

Amazon provides a good example of lean technocratic efficiency. So Amazon is a good model, not just for the CPU but the entire Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic CU.

One reason why Amazon is modeled for their lean stature is their use of automation. This following VIDEO depicts the creative solution of using robots to facilitate logistics in a warehouse environment:

VIDEO: Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/robots-help-amazon-tackle-cyber-monday/

December 1, 2014 – Cyber Monday is the biggest sales day of the year for online retail giant, Amazon. Last year, Amazon customers ordered 426 items every second on Cyber Monday, and this year that number is expected to grow. In addition to the 80-thousand seasonal workers they employ to fulfill orders, thousands of robots also crawl the warehouse floors. CNET.com’s KaraTsuboi takes us inside an Amazon fulfillment center to watch the robots in action. (VIDEO plays best in Internet Explorer).

Lean, automation, robotics, technocratic …

… welcome to the new Caribbean.

This is the mission of Go Lean roadmap, to elevate the economic engines of Caribbean society; industrial policy plays a key role in this roadmap. The region needs the jobs, so we need job creators: companies. These companies, or better stated, Direct Foreign Investors, need a pro-innovation environment to deploy their automated solutions. The Go Lean roadmap allows the structure of Self-Governing Entities (SGE) to incentivize industrial developments in the region. It is the expectation that robots and automated systems will flourish. The independence of the SGE structure neutralizes conflicts with “labor”.

Related issues have previously been detailed in these Go Lean commentaries listed here:

Disney World – Successful Role Model of a SGE

Using SGE’s to Welcome the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’

Where the Jobs Are – Ship-breaking under SGE Structure

Fairgrounds as SGE and Landlords for Sports Leagues

Puerto Rico’s Comprehensive Cancer Center Project Breaks Ground – Model of Medical SGE

In addition to the roadmap encouraging robotic automation, the CU will directly employ such technologically innovative products and services to impact its own prime directives; the CPU is such a reflection; more automation and less labor. The CU’s prime directives are identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The CPU features economic, security and governing concerns.

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

Amazon is not our only example. A previous blog/commentary identified Chinese company Alibaba as a fitting role model for Caribbean consideration. There are so many best-practices around the world for the region to study and glean insights and wisdom from. The successful application of this roadmap will foster such best-practices for the delivery of the CPU logistics in the Caribbean. The wisdom the Go Lean book gleans are presented as a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies; a detailed sample is listed as follows:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Strategy – Customers – Citizens and Member-states Governmental	Page 47
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Anecdote – Implementation Plan – Mail Services – US Dilemma	Page 99
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities	Page 105
Implementation – Improve Mail Services – Electronic Supplements	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Interstate Commerce	Page 129
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy –Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Call Centers	Page 212
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living	Page 234

Following the Amazon’s example (and Alibaba’s example) will spur the Caribbean to embrace more robotic technologies. This field is new, fresh and ready for innovation. There is a level-playing-field for any innovator to earn market share. The underlying company in the foregoing VIDEO is Kiva Systems – a Massachusetts based company that manufactures mobile robotic fulfillment systems.^[10][11] They rolled out a great product, then “Lo-and-behold”, they were acquired by a major e-Commerce company. Today, they are a subsidiary of Amazon, yet their material-handling systems are currently used by many other retailers including: The Gap, Walgreens, Staples, Gilt Groupe, Office Depot, Crate & Barrel, Saks 5th Avenue, and more.^[12]

This commentary therefore features the subjects of commerce, logistics and entrepreneurship. The Caribbean can emulate this model from Amazon. The biggest ingredient missing in the region is the ‘will’. But the ‘will’ can be fostered anew in the Caribbean. This is the heavy-lifting for the CU, instituting such new community ethos.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is a Big Idea for the region; that of a Cyber Caribbean, in which Cyber Mondays may become a big deal for our region – not only as consumers, but producers as well. Therefore, this roadmap is not just a plan for delivering the mail/packages, but rather a plan for delivering the future.

We must employ whatever tools and techniques, robotics included, to make the region a better homeland to live, work and play.

Does “play“include Robots? Yes, indeed. Consider this fun VIDEO here. 🙂

Supplemental VIDEO – The “Nutcracker” performed by Dancing Kiva Order Fulfillment Robots: http://youtu.be/Vdmtya8emMw

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————

Appendix – Source References:

2. “‘Cyber Monday’ Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year”. Shop.org.
3. “Fundivo – Cyber Monday Statistics”. Fundivo.
4. “What’s the difference between Black Friday and Cyber Monday?”. Mirror.co.uk. Mirror.co.uk. Nov 28, 2013. Retrieved 2014-11-25.
5. “Pima County in Arizona Replaces Columbus Day with Black Friday”. BestBlackFriday.com. 2013-08-07.
6. “”Fundivo – Black Friday Statistics””. Fundivo.
7. Small Business Saturday Hailed as Success. The Telegraph. 8 December 2013″. Telegraph.co.uk. 8 December 2013. Retrieved 2 December 2014.
8. Fox, Zoe (October 23, 2012). “6 Inspiring Organizations Joining in #GivingTuesday”. Retrieved February 15, 2014.
9. “#GivingTuesday: About”. Giving Tuesday. Retrieved February 15, 2014.
10. http://www.kivasystems.com/about-us-the-kiva-approach/
11. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2012/03/amazon_buys_warehouse_robotics.html
12. http://www.kivasystems.com/about-us-the-kiva-approach/history/

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Truth in Commerce – Learning from Yelp

Posted on April 1, 2015 in Government, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Small businesses are the backbone of Caribbean economies; same too in North America and Europe. Imagine then, small business owners doing everything just right, applying all best-practices and then boom, someone comes along with mis-truths and completely undermines their quality work. This is villainous!

This has happened, time and again; and now with the internet culture, the villains do not have to try too hard.

Consider this experience from the San Francisco Bay Area, with a Chinese-Hunan Restaurant in Millbrae, California named “Wonderful”:

At Wonderful, perhaps the best of the Bay Area’s new Hunan restaurants, dishes are riddled with pickled peppers and fermented black beans, and the menu is stocked with the steamed dishes, smoked meats and dry hot pots that define the regional cuisine to many Chinese eaters.

Owner Junsong Xue moved to the Bay Area from China 18 years ago to pursue a business master’s at Cal State Hayward. His twin brother stayed in Beijing, where he built a Hunan restaurant empire called Cai Xiang Gen.

After managing Mimi’s Cafe in San Mateo for 11 years, Junsong persuaded his twin to open a California branch of Cai Xiang Gen in Millbrae. It took the Xue family two years to build out the space, installing wood-framed booths, birdcage lights and a large television playing documentaries about Hunan cuisine. They opened the restaurant in April, with chefs from the chain’s Chinese branches circulating through the kitchen, training cooks and ensuring quality. – Restaurant Review posted January 19, 2015 by the San Francisco Chronicle’s online site “SF Gate”; retrieved April 1, 2015 from:

http://www.sfgate.com/restaurants/article/Hunan-s-second-heat-wave-introduces-classics-of-6019006.php#photo-7383515

This is best-practices personified…

… and then:

A Yelp* reviewer named Dan W. recently went to Wonderful in Millbrae and found the experience less than satisfactory. He gave the Hunan restaurant a “one star” and stated, “I was flying solo that night, after a particularly challenging day. The waiter came up and asked how many. I said one, I had planned to sit at the bar or get the food to go. She said “one? no, one?” and then ran off. I waited a minute at the door, and then left. They were busy and potentially understaffed. It’s not that classy of a place, but they refused to seat me.”

Basically, Dan W. claimed Wonderful wouldn’t seat a party of one, even though he was having a challenging day. The folks at Wonderful found Dan’s account of events challenging to believe, so they reviewed some surveillance footage. The restaurant figured out who Dan W. was and found him entering the restaurant, indeed solo (and after a challenging day.) Dan W. never spoke to anyone, took a look around, and promptly left. Wonderful responded with a dramatic and lengthy response to Dan with their video evidence.

Dan deleted his review, and their Yelp page is now [only] awash in 5-star reviews.

Here is Wonderful’s response to Dan W., complete with video evidence:

“Do Not Mess With Wonderful”. Claim the management, “Dan, we didn’t refuse to seat you. You refused to wait in line like everyone else. You thought you were special, so special that you don’t have to follow the rules. That’s not true, we caught you. You are prohibited from returning to Wonderful. If we catch you, you will be arrested for trespassing.” – Posted March 26, 2015 from: http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2015/03/26/bay-area-restaurant-finds-video-proves-negative-yelp-review-a-lie/

VIDEO: Lying Yelp Reviewer Caught by Wonderful Chinese Restaurant – Side Camera – https://youtu.be/i7XDtmu-MdI

Published on Mar 24, 2015 – Yelp Reviewer Dan W from San Bruno, Ca. left a review about a restaurant called Wonderful Chinese in Milbrae, Ca. and the restaurant exposed his lies.

What were the motives of the character Dan W.? It is not known here, but the cause-and-effect is villainous. Just a little comment could have ruined the reputation, brand and image of that restaurant and all the hard work/investment to build it up. On the one hand, Dan W. may simply claim “Freedom of Speech” but on the other hand, there must be some limits to speech. In truth, speech is not free! One cannot run into a crowded theater and erroneously shout “Fire, Fire” without consequences. The resultant stampede is prosecutable in most jurisdictions, as manslaughter or “depraved indifference”.

In addition to the Yelp incident, the American referral site Angie’s List has also “come under fire” for allowing non-credible reviews of businesses and service providers. This case seemed more benign, just a disagreement of levels of quality for a subjective service. Yet still, these incidences must be anticipated.

Based on the foregoing news articles, this issue is a hot topic right now.

The Empire Strikes Back…
Electronic Commerce is now all the rage. Many retail services are marketed, solicited and contracted online, so online reviews (like Yelp and Angie’s List) wield a lot of power; a bad review can truncate growth for a small business. Planners for economic empowerments must therefore consider governance of e-Commerce communications in its oversight. This is the assertion in the book Go Lean…Caribbean, that governance must be in place to ensure integrity of the region’s information super-highway (Page 79), across broadband and wireless deliveries. Too much is at stake. The book posits that some issues are too big for any one Caribbean member-state to manage alone – especially with close proximities where radio spectrum can bleed from one country to another. The book maintains that there are times when there must be a cross-border, multilateral coordination. This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to facilitate the growth, promotion and regulatory oversight of this Internet Communications Technology (ICT) industry space in a regional Single Market.

The Asian country of India has provided a good model for communication governance in the era of internet communications.

In September 2013, a petition was made to an Indian Court which claimed, amongst other things, that several public officials were using private email services (like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.) for official communication. Legal Counsel for the petitioner had argued that this imperiled national security and violated sections of the country’s Public Records Act, 1993, which mandates that all public records be maintained by the government within Indian territory. The Court found a breach in information security best-practices and ordered remedies accordingly. In response and in pursuit of compliance the government submitted a set of guidelines to the Court to approve for implementation. The guidelines concern many matters of data security; the fairly wide ranging Court Order made foreign sites like Google and Facebook establish grievance officers to report integrity problems within the country.

This Indian model mirrors the proposed Go Lean solution. It demands a lean technocratic efficiency to ensure that there is accountability and transparency in the governance of the Information Technology Arts and Sciences. We need a Grievance Officer for the Caribbean Single Market.

This is among the missions of Go Lean roadmap, to elevate the economic engines and accompanying electronic commerce eco-system of the Caribbean region. The region needs jobs, so we need job creators: small businesses. The CU’s prime directives are identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The subject of electronic commerce integrity features economic, security and governing concerns. The Go Lean roadmap calls for the deployment of a custom Social Media / Electronic Commerce offering for all Caribbean member-states, branded www.myCaribbean.gov. This Caribbean Cloud initiative is projected in the Go Lean book as a subset of the integrated postal operations, the Caribbean Postal Union. Commerce, whether Main Street or “E-Street”, must be facilitated with technocratic efficiency, accountability and commercial “fair play”. The vision to elevate these aspects of Caribbean society was defined early in the book (Page 12 & 14) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Caribbean biggest neighbor, the United States, is also struggling with the dynamics of this electronic commerce industry and the oversight of online reviews.

Some companies there had adopted new policies forbidding negative reviews on online sites. See excerpts of this September 14, 2014 news article here:

Title: Can a company stop you from writing a negative online review? Not if Congress passes this bill
By: Herb Weisbaum, NBC News Contributor

You’re entitled to your opinion – just be prepared for possible legal consequences if you share it online.

A growing number of companies now have “non-disparagement clauses” in their contracts or terms of use. They limit a customer’s right to comment on social media sites such as Yelp about the product or service they purchased – even if that comment or review is truthful and accurate.

A non-disparagement clause might look something like this:

Any disputes between the parties remain confidential. Customers shall not make or encourage others to make any public statement that is intended to, or reasonably could be foreseen to, embarrass or criticize the company or its employees, without obtaining prior written approval from the company.

“Non-disparagement clauses have the potential to create a profound chilling effect,” said Andy Sellars with the Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic. “Their mere existence may scare consumers from writing a review in the first place.”

The Consumer Review Freedom Act, introduced in Congress last week by two Democratic representatives from California, Rep. Eric Swalwell and Rep. Brad Sherman, would make it illegal for businesses to have non-disparagement clauses in their contacts that prohibit consumers from posting negative online reviews.

Read the full article: http://www.today.com/money/congress-wants-you-be-able-criticize-companies-2D80168557

There are so many best practices around the world for the Caribbean region to study for insights and wisdom. The successful application of this roadmap will foster such best practices for the delivery of home-grown electronic commerce and social media in the Caribbean. The wisdom the Go Lean book gleans from this global study is presented as a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies; a detailed sample is listed as follows:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Choose	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Integrate a Single Market of entire region	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Communications and Media Authority	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Anecdote – Implementation Plan – Mail Services – US Dilemma	Page 99
Implementation – Improve Mail Services – Electronic Supplements	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Interstate Commerce	Page 129
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy –Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Wifi & Mobile Apps	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Monopolies – Utilities to Oversee ICT	Page 202
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living	Page 234

This commentary therefore features the subjects of commerce, electronic commerce and entrepreneurship. The Caribbean can learn from the Americans and emulate the Indian model.

The biggest consideration should be “technocracy”, the ability to assess market conditions and structure viable solutions; driven by the community ethos of the Greater Good. The book defines that the term technocracy was originally used to designate the application of the scientific method to solving social & economic problems, in counter distinction to the traditional political or philosophic approaches. The CU will start as a technocratic confederation – a Trade Federation – rather than evolving to this eventuality. So technology governance and postal consolidations are planned for Day One of the CU roadmap.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people, businesses and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This Big Idea for the region, Cyber Caribbean, can truly impact the region. It can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

——-

Appendix – Source Reference:
* Yelp, Yelp.com and the Yelp mobile app, publishes crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses.

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Cash, Credit or iPhone …

Posted on March 3, 2015 in Economics, Government, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Caribbean society is advancing; moving forward…

A previous blog/commentary demonstrated that the region’s banks are ready to accept electronic payments transactions, that their deployment of credit card terminals allow the introduction of the Caribbean Dollar (C$) as a regional currency. This is a good start!

But the world has already moved forward from that standard. The future of the credit card, debit card and payment card is missing … the card! Yet, still the Caribbean region must be ready.

Getting the region ready is the mission of the book Go Lean … Caribbean, a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). This Go Lean roadmap depicts these entities as hallmarks of technocratic efficiency; therefore the agility will be part of the institutions’ DNA to not just keep pace with technology and market changes but also to drive change as well. In fact, these 3 statements are identified as prime directives for the CU/CCB effort:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

So the electronic payment schemes being considered by the rest of the world, in the following article, must also be envisioned for deployment in the Caribbean region:

Title: Cash, Credit or iPhone?
By: Chris Clayton, Special Contributor

If one word summed the future of how we pay for things, it certainly wouldn’t be “plastics”. Mobile payments are emerging as the ultimate disrupter of cash and credit cards, with Apple Pay, Google Wallet and others competing in an ever crowded market.

By nearly every psychographic measure, Elliot Payne is the ideal Apple customer. He lives in a hip city (Minneapolis), has a creative job (designer as a digital ad agency), moonlights as a DJ, blogs about tech and – most importantly – is a proud early adopter. So when Apple released its new mobile payment service on iPhone 6 in October, guess who tried it out at Whole Foods on the first day it was available? At checkout, Payne placed his thumb on his phone’s touch ID sensor, waved it in front of a reader on the payment terminal, and before he could say “expensive organic groceries,” he had used his fingerprint and smartphone to buy expensive organic groceries.

Not that swiping plastic is any more time-consuming than holding up your phone, but Payne argues that convenience isn’t Apple Pay’s main selling point. “Its more about security,” he says. Apple Pay uses something called “tokenization,” which replaces the card info stored on your phone with a special number used to make payments. That number is translated only when it reaches your credit card network, meaning the merchants never sees your financial information. It is not foolproof, but it’s a lot safer than swiping plastic, which leaves your identity exposed to hackers.

Innovations such as tokenization in the mobile space are slowly but surely pushing consumers away from cash, checks and physical cards…
…

According to a 2014 Business Insider report, in-store mobile payments in the United States (that is, using your phone to pay for goods rather than cash, check or plastic card) will grow by 153 percent from $1.8 billion in 2013 to $190 billion in 2018. Pair that with data from a 2014 Forrester Research eCommerce forecast predicting online retail sales to jump from $294 billion in 2014 to $414 billion in 2018, and its clear that our our growing love of smartphones and tablets is impacting how and where we shop. Predictably, banks, credit card networks, retailers and tech companies are clamoring to invent bells and whistles to make mobile payments easier, more secure, and – to borrow a phrase from a Square spokesperson when we asked how the merchant services outfit planned on winning at the point of sale – more “magical.”
…

Excerpt from: Delta SKY In-flight Magazine January 2015; retrieved from: http://msp.imirus.com/Mpowered/book/vds2015/i1/p70

———

Another article/VIDEO relating the Apple Pay innovation: Huntington Bank joins Key, PNC, US Bank and Chase with Apple Pay Deployment.

VIDEO – Apple Pay Demo – http://youtu.be/4I9MbIrlEUw

Published on Sep 9, 2014 – Apple has revealed its mobile payments play, and it features NFC and Touch ID, as many expected. Essentially, with the new iPhones, a user holds their phone near a payment terminal, and the payment card they’ve set as a default is called up, prompting a Touch ID action where the user authenticates their transaction.

———

Apple Pay is not the only Mobile Payment Solution. Other options have emerged:

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/mobile-payment-systems/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/digital-wallets/

http://www.cnet.com/au/news/anz-looks-to-a-smartphone-future-with-new-mobile-wallet/

The Go Lean book posits that electronic payment schemes (card-based, NFC and internet) are very important in this strategy to elevating the Caribbean economy, security and governing engines.

This Go Lean/CU/CCB roadmap looks to employ electronic payments schemes to impact the growth of the regional economy in tourism and other domestic endeavors. One CU scheme is directly targeted to impact one segment of tourism eco-system: Cruise line passengers:

The cruise industry needs the Caribbean more than the Caribbean needs the industry. But the cruise lines have embedded rules/regulations designed to maximize their revenues at the expense of the port-side establishments. The CU solution is to deploy a scheme for smartcards (or smartphone applications) that function on the ships and at the port cities. This scheme will also employ NFC technology – (Near Field Communications; defined fully at Page 192 – so as to glean the additional security benefits of shielding private financial data of the guest and passengers.

The goal of electronic payments is to facilitate more electronic commerce (or e-Commerce). The Go Lean roadmap defines that the Caribbean Dollar (C$) will be mostly cashless, an accounting currency. So the CCB will settle all C$ electronic transactions (MasterCard-Visa style or ACH style) and charge interchange/clearance fees. Apple Pay is not a “free” service; card issuers have to pay about 15 basis points (.15%) to Apple, and merchants pay about 3% interchange fees for the e-Payment transaction (MC/Visa/AmEx) itself. Acquirers (sales and consolidation organizations) must be in place. So this scheme allows for the full emergence of the e-Commerce eco-system.

The benefits of these technologies, as related in the foregoing articles, cannot be ignored for their security benefits. Previously this commentary explored the perplexing issues associate with cyber-security in this internet age. We cannot invite millions of visitors to the Caribbean region and then show disregard for their protections; including information security.

In terms of governance, there is the urgent need for regional coordination of the Caribbean radio spectrum. This regulates mobile phones, Wifi and satellite communications. Again, we cannot invite millions of guests and then exploit them with roaming charges the moment they turned on their smartphones to complete a payment transaction. This issue was also raised and explored in a previous Go Lean blog commentary. This is why the Go Lean roadmap calls for a consolidated Communications and Media Authority, operating under the CU’s Department of Commerce, to lead the oversight of these attendant telecommunication endeavors. The consequences of mis-management in this regards are dire. Soon and very soon, we will have tourists arriving on our shores with no credit cards; armed only with their smartphones; ready to tap unquenchable sums of discretionary monies for their enjoyment of Caribbean hospitality.

Still yet, the greatest benefit of marshaling electronic payments systems is not governance, nor security, nor technology; it is economics. These electronic payment schemes allow for more M1 in the regional economy; this is the measurement of currency/money in circulation (M0) plus overnight bank deposits. As M1 values increase, there is a dynamic to create money “from thin-air”, called the money multiplier. The more money in the system, the more liquidity for investment and industrial expansion opportunities. Lastly, there will be the additional economic benefit of mitigating Black Market “under-the-table” transactions, as all these electronic transactions must be processed through some clearing house, in the case of the Go Lean roadmap, this will be the role of the CCB, a cooperative of the region’s central banks.

The Go Lean book and accompanying blogs posit that the Caribbean is in crisis, and that this crisis will only worsen without some technocratic efficiency with currency and money supply (M1). The world is moving very fast, embracing one technological advancement after another; we cannot only consume these innovations, we must produce and guide advancements for ourselves:

The book posits that to adapt and thrive in the new global marketplace there must be more strenuous management and technocratic oversight of the region’s currencies, telecommunications (information security & spectrum) and governance. This is the charge of Go Lean roadmap, opening with these pronouncements; Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 and 14):

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxviii. Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

“Step One, Day One” in the Go Lean roadmap is the assembly of existing Caribbean organs under the regional administration of the CU. This includes the Caribbean Telecommunications Union (CTU), and the CCB governance; as a cooperative of existing central banks. The strategy is to implement the bank and C$ currency with the appropriate regulatory framework, tools and infrastructure, to facilitates the electronic schemes identified above.

The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the proper controls for electronic/mobile payments in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – Money Multiplier Principle	Page 22
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 25
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the monetary needs through a Currency Union	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Central Banking	Page 73
Implementation – Assemble Central Bank Cooperative	Page 96
Implementation – Assemble Caribbean Regional Organs – like CTU	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – #2: Currency Union / Single Currency	Page 127
Anecdote – Caribbean Currencies	Page 149
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Black Markets	Page 165
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism – Smartcard scheme	Page 193
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Reforms for Banking Regulations – Central Banking Efficiencies	Page 199
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Downtown Wi-Fi – Time and Place	Page 201
Appendix – Assembling the Caribbean Telecommunications Union	Page 256

The points of effective, technocratic banking/currency stewardship and dynamic change in the mobile communications space were further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4381	Net Neutrality: It Matters in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308	Systems for Emergency Telephone Numbers in Crisis; need for Mobile App for Emergencies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974	Google and Mobile Phones – Here comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3814	Lessons from the Swiss unpegging the franc
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	RBC EZPay – Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	The Need for Regional Cooperation to Up Cyber-Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3617	Bahamas roll-out of VAT leading more to Black Markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3582	For Canadian Banks: Caribbean is a ‘Bad Bet’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2074	MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal expands payment services to 10 markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin virtual currency needs regulatory framework to change image
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833	One currency, divergent economies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=476	CARICOM urged on ICT, e-Commerce and e-Payments

The Caribbean ought to participate in more mobile smartphone development. There are so many benefits from efficient regional oversight of this technology: more cruise tourism spending, fostering more e-Commerce, increasing regional M1, mitigation of Black Markets, growing the economy, creating jobs, enhancing security and optimizing governance. Mobile smartphones are the future, and that future is now! (We, the Caribbean, have to play catch-up).

Now is the time for all stakeholders of the Caribbean – residents, visitors, bankers and governing institutions – to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits are many; but most important, the success of the roadmap can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Net Neutrality: It Matters Here …

Posted on March 1, 2015 in Government, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

The world has changed! Much of the world’s media content is now being delivered via internet protocols (IP). In 1999, the telephone company Qwest Communications* ran a television commercial depicting that soon every movie ever made would be available on the internet for easy retrieval – see VIDEO below in Appendix A. The world is not at this point … just yet. But it will be for our children.

This commentary is a melding of ICT (Internet & Communications Technology), media, television, economics, competition and future forecasting – this is a big deal for the US … and the Caribbean. With the internet as the delivery vehicle, there must now be oversight of the information super-highway. Too much – as in the future for our children – is at stake.

One aspect of that oversight is the principle of net neutrality, allowing all internet traffic to be managed uniformly; (see Appendix B below). This has been the standard since the emergence of the commercial internet. The possibility of abolishing net neutrality has been of great debate as of late, with the American authorities – the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – ruling on the continuation of the net neutrality policy. The ruling demonstrates that the two decades of laissez-faire policy by the FCC is now being supplanted with a more broad authority over the Internet.

Title: US Internet providers hit with tougher rules, plan challenges
By: Alina Selyukh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. regulators on Thursday approved the strictest-ever rules on Internet providers, who in turn pledged to battle the new restrictions in the courts and Congress, saying they would discourage investment and stifle innovation.

The rules, which will go into effect in coming weeks, are expected to face legal challenges from multiple parties such as wireless, cable and other broadband companies and trade groups that represent them.

Experts expect the industry to seek a stay of the rules, first at the FCC and then in courts, though the chances for success of such an appeal is unclear.

The new regulations come after a year of jostling between cable and telecom companies and net neutrality advocates, which included web startups. It culminated in the FCC receiving a record 4 million comments and a call from President Barack Obama to adopt the strongest rules possible.

The agency’s new policy, approved as expected along party lines, reclassifies broadband, both fixed and mobile, as a more heavily regulated “telecommunications service,” more like a traditional telephone service.

In the past, broadband was classified as a more lightly regulated “information service,” which factored into a federal court’s rejection of the FCC’s previous set of rules in January 2014.

The shift gives the FCC more authority to police various types of deals between providers such as Comcast Corp and content companies such as Netflix Inc to ensure they are just and reasonable for consumers and competitors.

Internet providers will be banned from blocking or slowing any traffic and from striking deals with content companies, known as paid prioritization, for smoother delivery of traffic to consumers.

The FCC also expands its oversight power to so-called interconnection deals, in which content companies pay broadband providers to connect with their networks. The FCC would review complaints on a case-by-case basis.

Republican FCC commissioners, who see the new rules as a government power grab, delivered lengthy dissents. Their colleagues in Congress hope to counter the new rules with legislation. All five FCC members are expected to testify in the Senate on March 18.

Large Internet providers say they support the no-blocking and no-discrimination principles of the new rules but that the FCC’s regulatory path will discourage investment by lowering returns and limiting experimentation with services and business plans.

Some smaller telecoms, such as Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc , have argued new rules will have little impact on investments. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Thursday agreed.

“The (Internet service providers’) revenue stream will be the same tomorrow as it was yesterday,” he said at the FCC meeting.

“I have spent a lot of time in public policy, and today is the proudest day of my public policy life,” he later told reporters.

Legal experts and industry lobbyists say corporate lawyers are waiting for the FCC to publish the specifics of the rules, a document more than 300 pages long. Lawsuits can be filed after the rules are recorded in the Federal Register, likely days later.

Wheeler sought to address in the new rules some Internet providers’ concerns, proposing no price regulations, tariffs or requirements to give competitors access to networks.

Cable and telecom shares saw muted reactions on Thursday. They had jumped earlier this month when Wheeler confirmed long-bubbling expectations that he would seek a tougher regulatory regime, with some adjustments to the network needs.

(Reporting by Alina Selyukh; Additional reporting by Malathi Nayak and Andrew Chung; Editing by Christian Plumb and Ken Wills)
Source: Reuters News Wire Service – Retrieved February 26, 2015 from:
http://news.yahoo.com/tougher-internet-rules-hit-cable-telecoms-companies-060527764–finance.html

Related Stories

Broadband Investors Should Wake Up to Net Neutrality – The Wall Street Journal

In landmark decision, US plan bans two-speed Internet – AFP

Net Fix: 8 burning questions about Net neutrality – CNET

VIDEO: Net Neutrality: How Open-Internet Activists Won Big – http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/net-neutrality-how-open-internet-activists-won-big-n313406

This article aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean. We learn a lot of lessons from this discussion. It reflects the regional oversight that the book envisions for the Caribbean region. Will there be the need for net neutrality discussions and reform for the Caribbean? Will competition policy be set to cater to private or corporate special interests? The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to navigate issues like these for the Greater Good. This CU roadmap is designed to elevate Caribbean society by these three prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines; growing the regional economy to $800 Billion and creating 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, utilizing a separation-of-powers with member-states.

All 3 of these directives of the Go Lean roadmap have deliveries on the internet, as this covers telephone, cable, broadband, Wifi and satellite. Offering some of these services to a regional market would garner extended competition, better pricing and more offerings. This is why the book posits that some issues are too big for any one member-state to manage alone – especially with such close proximities – there are times when there must be a cross-border, multilateral coordination. Such an important attribute affects our youth, more so than any other stakeholders. This vision is defined early in the book (Pages 11 – 14) with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law…

xxvi.  Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxvii.  Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

xxx.   Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for the market organizations and community investments to garner economic benefits from the single market that could not be derived otherwise. The roadmap posits that having a larger market allows more leverage and more impetus to facilitate the roadmap’s quest to make the Caribbean region a better place to live, work and play.

One tenant of a free market economy is the emergence of a “better mousetrap”. This idiom asserts that the world would beat a path to the door of that mousetrap. But if the cable companies get their way, they would be able to enter the “room of business opportunity”, then “lock the door behind them” to ensure no one else could enter. This paradox would be unproductive for future growth with the internet and the attendant functions of electronic commerce.

The subject of net neutrality in the US is just another example of American crony-capitalism where public policy is often hijacked to benefit private parties. Consider this chart of well-documented cases of bad corporate behavior:

Big Media	Cable companies conspire to keep rates high; textbook publishers practice price gouging; Hollywood insists on big tax breaks/ subsidies for on-location shooting.
Big Oil	While lobbying for continuous tax subsidies, the industry have colluded to artificially keep prices high and garner rocket profits ($38+ Billion every quarter).
Big Box	Retail chains impoverish small merchants on Main Street with Antitrust-like tactics, thusly impacting community jobs.
Big Pharma	Chemo-therapy cost $20,000+/month; and the War against Cancer is imperiled due to industry profit insistence.
Big Tobacco	Cigarettes are not natural tobacco but rather latent with chemicals to spruce addiction.
Big Agra	Agribusiness concerns bully family farmers and crowd out the market; plus fight common sense food labeling efforts.
Big Data	Brokers for internet and demographic data clearly have no regards to privacy concerns.
Big Banks	Wall Street’s damage to housing and student loans are incontrovertible.
Big Weather	Overblown hype of “Weather Forecasts” to dictate commercial transactions.
Big Real Estate	Preserving MLS for Real Estate brokers only, forcing 6% commission rates, when the buyers and sellers can meet without them.

The Go Lean roadmap places a lot of focus on ICT, electronic commerce, and the landscape to incentivize youth participation in a Caribbean future.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean to lean-in to the following community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies detailed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean to deliver the solutions to elevate the Caribbean region through ICT and electronic commerce: as follows:

Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principle – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Confederate into a Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Embrace the Advances of Technology	Page 46
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Communications and Media Authority	Page 79
Implementation – Foreign Policies at Start-up	Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization – Technology Equalization	Page 119
Planning – Big Ideas – 10 Big Ideas – #8 Cyber Caribbean	Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education – Promotion of e-Learning	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – e-Government & e-Delivery Deployments	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract – Technology/Efficiencies	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications – Regulate Media Industrial Complex	Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology – Intellectual Property Protections	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce – e-Payments & Wifi Facilitations	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street – Wifi & Mobile Apps: Time and Place	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Monopolies – Utilities to Oversee ICT/New Media	Page 202
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Youth – Foster Work Ethic for ICT	Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Broadband for Work-at-Home	Page 234
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Rural Living – e-Learning to Mitigate Relocations	Page 235
Appendix – Copyright Infringement – Enforcing Intellectual Property Rights	Page 351

The book Go Lean…Caribbean, and aligning blog-commentaries assert that the region can be a better homeland, improving on economic, security and governing engines. The region can be elevated by embracing ICT and forging more industrial development in cyber-space. This is essential to project to the Caribbean youth that they can prosper where they are planted here at home, because of the regional, technocratic efforts/successes.

Previous blogs/commentaries also exclaimed societal benefits from pursuits in regional coordination; consider this sample of previous blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308	Regional Coordination for Emergency Telephone Number, like “911”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974	Model for Regional Internet Excellence: Google
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	Regional Coordination for Cyber Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3090	Model of Regionalism: Europe – All Grown Up
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2887	Caribbean Region Must Work Together to Address Rum Subsidies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2171	Regional Sports Role Model for Broadcast Networks
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=888	e-Government: Taking the Town Square Digital to Reinvent Government
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=308	CARCIP – Regional Effort Foster Technology Innovations

The Go Lean book posits that the internet can level the playing field (Page 119), allowing small institutions to compete with larger ones; and small states to compete with larger ones. The assertion is that ICT must be regulated – as a utility- at the regional level for the Caribbean Greater Good, as there are too many instances with overlapping radio spectrum. Instead of managing this process with bilateral treaties – the status quo – the Go Lean approach is a confederation treaty with all 30 member-states; the CU would regulate internet broadband providers as public utilities in a separation-of-power structure with the federal agency versus member-states.

The region needs the delivery of this Go Lean roadmap. More innovation will emerge with the internet; and we need some of that innovation locally in the Caribbean. Without the equalizing effects of technology/ICT, we will be rendered even more inconsequential for the future. Then our youth will not be inspired to invest in their homeland. This is sad for the youth and even more sad for the homeland.

The quest of Go Lean/CU is to do the heavy-lifting to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. This is conceivable, believable and achievable!

🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

APPENDICES:

A. VIDEO: Qwest TV Commercial 1999 – http://youtu.be/xAxtxPAUcwQ

Uploaded on January 30, 2012 – Remember how absurd this seemed in 1999 before the internet really took off? When the weary traveler asked the front desk what entertainment was available, the response was: “all rooms have every movie ever made in any language anytime, day or night.”

* Qwest Communications International, Inc. is now superseded as a corporate entity; it was acquired in 2010 and continues as CenturyLink, Inc.

———–

B. Net Neutrality

This is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication. The term was coined by Columbia University media law professor Tim Wu in 2003 as an extension of the longstanding concept of a common carrier.^[1][2][3][4]

There has been extensive debate about whether net neutrality should be required by law, particularly in the United States. Debate over the issue of net neutrality predates the coining of the term. Advocates of net neutrality such as Lawrence Lessig have raised concerns about the ability of broadband providers to use their last mile infrastructure to block Internet applications and content (e.g. websites, services, and protocols), and even to block out competitors.^[5] On the contrary, opponents claim net neutrality regulations would deter investment into improving broadband infrastructure and try to fix something that isn’t broken.^[6][7]

Net neutrality proponents claim that telecom companies seek to impose a tiered service model in order to control the pipeline and thereby remove competition, create artificial scarcity, and oblige subscribers to buy their otherwise noncompetitive services.^[8] Many believe net neutrality to be primarily important for the preservation of current internet freedoms; a lack of net neutrality would allow Internet service providers, such as Comcast, to extract payment from content providers like Netflix, and these charges would ultimately be passed on to consumers.^[9][10] Prominent supporters of net neutrality include Vinton Cerf, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, law professor Tim Wu, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Tumblr founder David Karp, and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver.^{[11][12][13][14]} (See John Oliver VIDEO in Appendix C). Organizations and companies that support net neutrality include the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Greenpeace, Tumblr, Kickstarter, Vimeo, Wikia, and others.^[8][15][16]

Net neutrality opponents from the likes of IBM, Intel, Juniper, Qualcomm, and Cisco claim that net neutrality would deter investment into broadband infrastructure, saying that “shifting to Title II means that instead of billions of broadband investment driving other sectors of the economy forward, any reduction in this spending will stifle growth across the entire economy. Title II is going to lead to a slowdown, if not a hold, in broadband build out, because if you don’t know that you can recover on your investment, you won’t make it.” ^[17][18] Prominent opponents also include Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol Bob Kahn, PayPal founder and Facebook investor Peter Thiel, Internet engineer and former Chief Technologist for the FCC David Farber, Broadcast.com founder Mark Cuban, and Nobel Prize economist Gary Becker.^{[19][20][21][22][23]}

Examples of net neutrality violations include when the Internet service provider Comcast intentionally slowed peer-to-peer communications.^[27]

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality)

————

C. VIDEO – Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Net Neutrality (HBO) – http://youtu.be/fpbOEoRrHyU

Published on June 1, 2014 – Cable companies are trying to create an unequal playing field for internet speeds, but they’re doing it so boringly that most news outlets aren’t covering it.
John Oliver explains the controversy and lets viewers know how they can voice their displeasure to the FCC. (Content warning: Some profanity!)

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‘Change the way you see the world; you change the world you see’

Posted on January 24, 2015 in Ethos, Industries, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

Drawing reference to this quotation:

“No flying cars, no dinners in a pill, and certainly no cool rocketing off to space cities in the required outfit of the future. We seem to have failed the expectations of the most wild-eyed seers from the past – futurologists who were for the most part in love with a supercharged, technologically sexy future where science would free us from the daily grind, for holidays on the moon or underseas. But here we remain, plodding along … in a familiar world that is neither utopia nor dystopia.” – Go Lean…Caribbean (Page 26)

As evident in the above quotation, the Go Lean book focuses heavily on the future. But now that it is 2015, many people are disappointed that the future they had envisioned has not materialized. “The future ain’t what it used to be” – the book quotes this phrase as originating from Yogi Berra, the iconic Baseball Hall-of-Famer known for his eclectic phraseology.

There are many organizations that are focusing on future innovations, one of them is computer software giant Microsoft. As follows is a VIDEO featuring the company’s new hologram offering. This will change the way we see the world and with it we can change the world we see.

This quest aligns with the Go Lean book, in its mission to change the Caribbean, to elevate its society by optimizing the economic, security and governing engines. See this related VIDEO:

VIDEO – Microsoft HoloLens Review, mind blowing Augmented Reality! – https://youtu.be/ihKUoZxNClA

Published on Jul 21, 2016 – Microsoft HoloLens review, AR- mind blowing! By James Mackey!

My expectations were already high, but when I tried the HoloLens, my mind was blown at how outrageously good it is.

I show you Microsoft Office 365 running through my HoloLens, accessing Excel and Word as Holograms. I then access Microsoft Edge for web browsing plus YouTube, just incredible; AR for business.

I run some extremely cool HoloLens apps such as LSrD (wow, imagine the DMT trips you could simulate on this!) and then Galaxy Explorer to see our Solar System including the Sun and Saturn at very close up range.

I then run a Beta 3D simulation of a shark, once again, absolutely incredible. I zoom into the shark hologram whilst it’s swimming around my living room.

It’s without doubt the hand gestures need some work as it’s hard to manipulate objects when at a distance. The only other problem is the field of view is small, but once this has been resolved through future iterations of the HoloLens, AR is set to change the world.

Then, to go a step further with my futurist hat on, consider the Softcell Lens (AR in a contact Lens) and the EyeTap and the future really looks exciting, I see AR impacting every part of our lives. If we want it to of course.

I also link to my blog in the video where I discuss AR street dating, volumetrically captured video conferencing, AR shopping, facial and emotion recognition, and much more; http://www.mackie.xyz/james-mackie-pu…

I discuss emails, text messages and phone calls delivered through AR, the replacement / death of mobile phones and the personal computer. Death of the mouse & keyboard, eye-tracking, field of view, Adaptive Focus (Magic Leap) and even, imaginary friends!

AR | HoloLens | Microsoft HoloLens | Augmented Reality | futurist

Category: Science & Technology

License: Standard YouTube License

The book Go Lean…Caribbean champions the cause of building and optimizing the Caribbean eco-system. There are a lot of expectations for technology in the region, to aid and assist with all aspects of the Go Lean prime directives, defined as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/governing engines in the homeland of the region’s 30 member-states. The CU strives to elevate all of Caribbean society and culture. The Go Lean…Caribbean clearly recognizes that holograms will contribute to cultural development of any society. The Caribbean does not only want to be on the consuming end of these developments; we want to create, develop and contribute to the innovations. This starts by fostering genius in Caribbean stakeholders who demonstrate competence in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This may apply more to the youth markets.

At the outset, the Go Lean roadmap recognizes the value of harnessing STEM career options. This intent was pronounced early in the book with these statements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12 & 14):

xiii. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxviii. Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

The hologram system in the foregoing VIDEO is a combination of hardware and software, an appliance from Microsoft. But according to their press release, Independent Software Vendors will be partnering with Microsoft to develop and deploy software solutions. The Go Lean roadmap posits that the Caribbean must contribute software solutions for applications in this industry space. We cannot only consume; so a recommended community ethos for the region to adapt, “Return on Investments” (Page 24), calls for embedding incentives and inducements to encourage students and apprenticeships in this field. Imagine forgive-able student loans, on-the-job training employment contracts, paid internships, signing bonuses, etc. This ethos also translates into governing principles for federally sponsored business incubators, R&D initiatives, grants, entrepreneurship programs and the regional implementation of Self-Governing Entities (SGE).

The book estimates 64,000 new direct and indirect technology/software jobs in the Caribbean marketplace.

The Go Lean roadmap was constructed with the community ethos in mind to forge change and build up communities, plus the execution of related strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to make the change permanent. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Bridge the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Around	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States	Page 45
Strategy – Vision – Invite Diaspora Back to the Caribbean Homeland	Page 46
Strategy – Mission – Exploit the benefits and opportunities of globalization	Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities	Page 105
Implementation – Trends in Implementing Data Centers – Creating the ‘Cloud’	Page 106
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media – Caribbean Cloud	Page 111
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean	Page 118
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Cyber-Caribbean	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education – STEM Promotion	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance – e-Government & e-Delivery	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications	Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism – Internet Marketing	Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth	Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Appendix – CU Job Creations	Page 257
Appendix – Copyright Infringement – Protecting Intellectual Businesses	Page 351

This Go Lean roadmap calls for the heavy-lifting to build-up Caribbean communities, to shepherd important aspects of Caribbean life, so as to better prepare for the future, dissuade emigration and encourage repatriation.

These goals were previously featured in Go Lean blogs/commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3641	‘We Built This City … on Music, Entertainment and Leisure Businesses’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490	How One Internet Entrepreneur Can Rally a Whole Community
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3384	Plea to Detroit: Less Tech, Please
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3187	Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2953	Funding Caribbean Entrepreneurs – The ‘Crowdfunding’ Way
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126	Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698	STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1487	Here come the Drones … and the Concerns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1277	The need for highway safety innovations – here comes Google
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=673	Ghost Ships Emergence – Autonomous cargo vessels without a crew
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=308	CARCIP Urges Greater Innovation

The Go Lean book focuses primarily on economic issues, and it recognizes that computer hardware, software and appliances, like the hologram system in the foregoing VIDEO, is the future direction for industrial developments. This is where the jobs are to be found. The Go Lean roadmap describes the heavy-lifting for people, organizations and governments to forge these innovations here at home in the Caribbean. The Caribbean is no Silicon Valley nor Silicon Beach, but a nascent industry can still be fostered and nurtured into fruition.

A Big Dream? No, this is a conceivable, believable and achievable business plan. The Go Lean book offers the turn-by-turn directions for strategies, tactics and implementations. With the right commitment of time, talent and treasuries, we can make the region a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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