by HR Avant-Garde | Feb 21, 2016 | HR Articles
Once disrupted, can your product be repositioned for the luxury market? (Image: Pixabay)
We recently talked about how the best companies combine talent and technology in the most efficient way to innovate in their field.
Most leaders inside the boiler room pave their way in pure technology plays. But some companies build their new competitive advantage upon the premise that most of us have moved so comfortably into the digital world that it has elevated analogue products to where they can now be monetized as luxury goods.
Disrupted by digital files, vinyl recordings now sell for larger margins to audiophiles. (Image: Pixabay)
Vinyl recordings, excluding their content value, were commodities as a sound medium. Now they are an expensive, high-margin acquisition for audiophiles.
Think of how traditional analogue watches were gradually replaced with digital timepieces in the 1970s. Once the transition was nearly complete, traditional timepieces regained lost market share by repositioning themselves even further into the luxury market.
A hand-written note becomes treasured when most messaging is digital. (Image: Pixabay)
Fountain pens lost their dominant share of the market in the 1950s with the arrival of the ballpoint pen. Today, a fountain pen is a high-end luxury good with higher margins than their 1950s’ counterpart.
Inside the Boiler Room celebrates disruption. As disruption increases the efficiency and productivity of the market, disrupted industries can reposition themselves from high-revenue, low-cost commodities to high-end, high-margin luxury goods.
As communication is now almost exclusively digital, handwritten letters, especially those showcasing beautiful calligraphy, are even more valued by their recipients .
HR Avant-Garde spent time with Kunal Sheth to see what he had to say about our premise on how, with enough disruption, analogue can sometimes trump digital with higher margins than before.
Vincent Suppa works with startups and investors and teaches graduate courses at New York University. His email is suppa@suppa.org.
© Vincent Suppa 2016
by HR Avant-Garde | Feb 21, 2016 | Inside the Boiler Room
In an age of ubiquitous digital communication, Fountain repositioned the hand-written greeting card for the high-end market.
Kunal Sheth has responded to the digital revolution by moving analogue into the luxury space. With digital communication now the default, Kunal empowers real estate developers and dutiful sons and daughters alike to send beautiful hand written cards to clients and parents, respectively.
The sentiments and words are from Fountain Greetings‘ customers. The outstanding calligraphy is from his trained staff. Don’t worry about backing up these messages in the cloud because his cards are beautiful objects on their own displayed by the people who probably cannot remember the last time they received a greeting card in the mail. (more…)
by HR Avant-Garde | Oct 22, 2015 | HR Articles
The future of HR is business-line specialties replacing conventional HR categories. (Image: Pixabay)
As technology becomes more powerful, which HR specialties remain relevant in the marketplace? In our previous post, we illustrated why middle level management jobs are being decimated. Because most tactical HR jobs are in middle-level management, we are changing the paradigm of what constitutes an HR specialty to ensure skill security and earning power.
Strategy cannot operate beneath another strategy; the former is tactical by definition. With algorithms automating tactical executions using big data, people become less relevant to the process.
Computers excel at defined routine tasks. They play chess well. Yet even the best algorithms can’t innovate original strategies. We can transition HR from tactical executions beneath strategy by developing HR specialties along business strategies.
HR Avant-Garde has notable success mentoring HR protégées in disciplines as varied as big data and social media. While attending HR career fairs, they find themselves with few rivals. If you specialize in traditional HR functions, how many people are competing with similar skills? How much smaller is the applicant pool for HR experts specializing in pre-IPO startups requiring post Series A funding ramp ups?
An HR specialty in turnaround companies reorganizing under bankruptcy protection is another in-demand niche with few competitors.
How will you future-proof your HR career? (Image: Pixabay)
How many of your colleagues have developed expertise in the HR complexities surrounding mergers and acquisitions? US companies are horizontally integrating into Asia and Latin America lacking HR specialists who can integrate and incentivize international teams around a coherent strategy.
This new paradigm of HR disciplines avoids being obviated by technology by centering on strategic business lines instead of HR categories. These neo-HR specialties with their business-line focus are in high demand while remaining in short supply, because they go against the conventional HR approach.
The Least You Need to Know:
Consider being the HR guru in these business specialties to give you a competitive advantage in a market saturated with conventional HR practitioners:
- Pre-IPO Startups
- Social Media
- Big Data
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Turnaround
- Internal Marketing
- Innovation
- Companies horizontally integrating across boarders
- Companies increasing or decreasing their vertical integration
Vincent Suppa works with startups and investors and teaches graduate courses at New York University. His email is suppa@suppa.org.
© Vincent Suppa 2015
by HR Avant-Garde | Oct 13, 2015 | HR Articles
Can you be replaced by an algorithm that feeds on big data? (Image: Pixabay)
Which HR specialty will maximize your paycheck while limiting your exposure to redundancy in today’s on-demand economy?
Computers excel at defined tasks. Tasks accomplished through explicit rules, no matter how complex, can be completed by software. This is why tactical jobs’ wages against inflation have decreased since the 1970s. Most middle management jobs are tactical and continue to be eliminated by algorithms feeding on Big Data.
Just as previous humanoids have become extinct to make way for modern man, the middle-level manager is a concept of the past. (Image: Pixabay)
Looking at transactional jobs as historical examples, consider the 1960s workplace and how voicemail and email has eroded the secretarial professions.
Middle-level managers reached pinnacle earning in the pre-computer age. Their function was not to generate strategy but in directing flows of information between worker bees and executives.
These jobs still exist, but with shrinking numbers and declining real wages. Jobs that cannot be done via explicit rules – manual labor and strategy creation – are safe from elimination and explain much of income inequality.
Many HR specialties are both middle management and tactical. They include recruitment, ER, compensation, benefits, training and HRIS. These functions remain vital, and as more intelligence is programmed into software, their value added will even increase. However, as technology requires fewer workers to accomplish more with less training, HR tactical specialists will continue to see their real wages decrease.
Even before the financial crisis of 2008, real wages for US workers were trending downward. (Image: Wall Street Journal)
Technology decimates lawyers’ billable hours so why would HR specialists be any safer?
When technology hit the US agriculture sector, the new motto was, never have so few fed so many, as the number of farming professionals decreased while crop yields increased.
As technology becomes more powerful, mobile and cheaper, which HR specialties will keep you relevant in the marketplace? We’ll explore the answer in our next post.
The Least You Need to Know.
- The intersection of algorithms and big data is automating many middle level management functions. This pushes wages down.
- This automation means fewer middle level managers are needed; most traditional HR jobs are middle level management jobs.
- Machine to Machine Learning (M2M) and Master Algorithms will exacerbate this phenomenon.
Vincent Suppa works with startups and investors and teaches graduate courses at New York University. His email is suppa@suppa.org.
© Vincent Suppa 2015
by HR Avant-Garde | Jun 16, 2015 | HR Articles
How do you facilitate innovation? (Image: Pixabay)
Among the value-added activities of HR is combining talent to maximize innovation.
Innovation comes about in two ways: creation of new technologies and recombining existing technologies. The US Patent Office’s Handbook of Classifications illustrates this point. The Patent Classification system includes classes and subclasses; the former contains creation of new technologies, while the later combines varying processes with different structural and functional features of existing technologies.
Edison recombined existing technologies to create the light bulb. (Photo: Public Domain)
When new technology is invented, the USPTO issues a new single classification code. However, the majority of issued patents are not granted on the basis of new discoveries, but on recombining existing discoveries. Instead of a new single code, a new recombination of class and subclass codes is issued.
In the 19th century, half the patents were for single code inventions – new discoveries. In the 21st century, over 90% of patents are for inventions combining two or more codes – recombination.
Today’s innovations combine existing technologies in new ways by people who see new interactions in previously made discoveries. When Edison created the light bulb, we already had filaments, electricity and glass to create vacuums. It was Edison’s patentable recombination of previously discovered technologies that created the lightbulb.
Today’s patents are mostly recombinations. (Photo: Public Domain)
Figuring out how to recruit and incentivize talent responsible for each subcomponent across a startup’s value chain is what avant-garde HR professionals do before placing the right talent into optimal combinations.
By the time Tal Givoly created Medivizor, he had the sum total of medical science and the computer science of algorithms at his disposal. By recombining discoveries of these two broad disciplines across the apparatus of the internet, he created innovations with huge social gains for society supported by a sustainable business model.
HR Avant-Garde spent time Inside the Boiler Room with Tal Givoly. Click here to see what he had to say.
Vincent Suppa works with startups and investors and teaches graduate courses at New York University. His email is suppa@suppa.org.
© Vincent Suppa 2015
