<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">When implementing a UBP model, prioritize allowing for maximum usage flexibility and pricing transparency for your customer. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Create the option for customers to commit to your product for an extended time period for a pricing discount.  </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Emphasize the benefits of UBP to your investors and get them excited about usage-based metrics. </li><li class="ql-align-justify">Don’t hesitate to automate financial processes when you are ready to scale.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Don’t let your financial team exist in a vacuum. Collaborating with outside teams will help your team do their job more accurately and be prepared for change.</li></ul>

Usage-Based Pricing(UBP)

Usage-based pricing removed a lot of friction for adoption.For customers, getting started is easy and with an emphasis on flexible usage, staying with the company becomes a no-brainer.Pricing transparency is also a huge selling point.

Removing Friction By Being Transparent

Answering questions about what the top line is going to grow to as new logos are added or as existing logos expand can be more challenging with UBP.

Manage Expectations for Predictability

<ul><li>Your product and platform's intrinsic virality gives your investors confidence in continual top-line growth.</li><li>ARR is the metric that communicates how Datadog is performing today.</li><li>Usage-based annual recurring revenue (UARR) measures usage growth over time with any vertical customer.</li></ul>

Sell Your Investors on UBP With Redefined Metrics

Financial processes need to clearly present different commitment and drawdown plans and track customer-specific contract terms.Whereas seat-based models can implement a third-party customer billing platform with relative ease, these billing platforms cannot readily account for all the features.

Automate Financial Processes to Scale

<ul><li>Pricing will change with a UBP model.</li><li>The finance team has to be able to adapt and move as these new insights arrive.</li><li>Take proactive measures to understand potential changes and prepare your teams for them.</li></ul>

What The Finance Team Needs To Do

I joined Datadog as VP Finance back in 2015 when the company was still very small. Back then, the company had about 100 employees, was making around $20

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

business

Business

Implementing Usage-Based Pricing: What Your Financial Teams Need to Know - OpenView

You have an idea for a new product, and now you want to bring it to market. You may not think it would be easy because of your limited budget and experience. The internet is an excellent tool for research, but there is also value in visiting brick and mortar retailers and befriending store managers. In addition, trade shows are great for doing market research and relationship building. Before you start spending your time and money trying to commercialize your idea, you need to ask yourself some pointed questions.

Bringing an idea to market

Market size: How large is the potential market for your new idea? Put otherwise, how many consumers may be interested?  Competition: How saturated is the market for similar products? Too much competition can make it extremely difficult to succeed. However, identifying products that have been selling for a while without innovation or improvement could be worthwhile. Value proposition: Does your new idea offer a benefit that consumers will want to pay for? Amazon reviews can help to identify the benefits that consumers are actively looking for.

Market size, Competition, and Value proposition

Manufacturing: Can your new idea be manufactured using existing machinery? YouTube can help in researching alternative manufacturing methods. Cost: Will the retail price of your new idea be low enough to stand up to the competition? Protection: How will you protect your ownership of your idea with intellectual property? Patenting can be very costly.

Manufacturing, Cost, and Protection

Education: Do people understand when you explain your concept to them? Educating the consumer can be expensive and time-consuming.Line extensions: One new idea doesn't make a business. Consider how you can expand your idea into a line of products.Profit margin: After all the expenses required to bring your product to market, can you live on the money left over? Experience: Do you have the necessary skills to launch a new idea, and can you build a team to help you?Money: Are you prepared financially?

Education, line extensions, profit margins

Crowdfunding to raise money.Test your idea while raising the funds you need to get started.Joining a startup. It can be enlightening to work with others who have skills that you don't.Focus on licensing your idea instead of venturing. Licensing is like renting. Instead of you doing all the work, your licensee takes on the responsibility of manufacturing, marketing, and fulfillment. The company should have great distribution.

Ways to mitigate risk

Ready to go all in on your new idea? Make sure you know the answers to these questions first. 

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

startup

Startups

Can Your New Idea Compete? 11 Criteria to Help You Assess

Useful = allows a user to accomplish an objective in a certain contextUsable = useful + enablement of the user to perform an actionUsed = useful + enablement + adoption. The ultimate goal of a product.

Useful,  Usable and Used have different meanings

Some questions to guide<ul><li>Life goals – what does the user aspire to in their life? How might your product get them to that goal? What would motivate a user to choose your product over a competing product that achieves this objective?</li><li>Completion goals – what do users expect to happen at the end of using your product? What can you measure when this takes place?</li><li>Behavioral goals – when users undertake achieving the goal without using your product, how do they do it? How can your product mimic that process so that the product is familiar to them? </li></ul>

Ease of Use

Oftentimes, usability is mistaken with user experience, but in reality, it is just a part of it. Usability, on its own, is also not only ease of use, but rather a sum of multiple aspects: <ul><li>effectiveness - the ability to complete a task</li><li>efficiency - effectiveness + speed</li><li>engagement - looking right (typography, navigation)</li><li>error tolerance - preventing users to do errors</li><li>ease of learning - appropriate onboarding on a product or learning about new releases</li></ul>

Usability

Imagine a product has 7 different buttons, that whenever pressed with low or high intensity, they produce different results for users: <ul><li>Useful - has a purpose in the user's life</li><li>Usable - enables the purpose of a product to be brought to reality</li><li>Findable - the product and its content are easy to find</li><li>Credible - has built trust that it can accomplish the promised purpose</li><li>Desirable - good brand, image, identity, aesthetics and emotional design</li><li>Accessible -  a product's ability to be used by as many people as possible (e.g. impaired people)</li><li>Valuable (its production costs don't outweigh its usefulness)</li></ul>

The 7 Factors of User Experience

<ul><li>Top Management Support: Getting resources from top management to test innovative ideas</li><li>Market Orientation: Ability to conduct user and market research to bring them closer to the need of users</li><li>Technology: Suitable for the market selected</li><li>Knowledge management: Information sharing between teams helps bring down the knowledge silos</li><li> Development Strategies: Teams can negotiate and bring input to the roadmap</li><li> Development Speed: Being fast enough to provide value ahead of competitors</li><li> Development Process: Clear processes for design and development</li><li>Product Teams: Bringing different input for the product </li></ul>

Factors of success for new product development

Adoption is the ultimate goal of a product. For it to happen, the Product works with the marketing teams:<ul><li>Pre-Design Phase: Market research determines if the user base is large enough to make a product profitable; user research looks into its value & usability. </li><li>Design Phase: Designers ensure the product is desirable & usable, and marketers work to release news and build anticipation for the release.</li><li>Launch Phase & Beyond: Involve channel partners, distributors, influencers to spread the word; press releases, social media, free trials where possible. Get meaningful metrics to measure adoption.</li></ul>

Turning prospects into users

Appropriation can have two meanings: <ul><li>the usage of existing objects to create different contexts than originally thought (e.g. dressing in clothes from another culture)</li><li>the usage of a product in an unintended way  (e.g. using a block of cement instead of a hammer with a nail). </li></ul>It is desired that companies look to integrate their products in other contexts to attract more users, but should pay attention to copyrights issues.

Appropriation

There are different stages of a product and different strategies apply to each of them: <ol><li>Market Introduction: High costs, low sales, little competition, customer education, marketing investment, low profitability</li><li>Growth: Declining costs, higher sales volumes, profitability appears, brand awareness, competitors appear</li><li>Maturity: Declining costs, sales at peak, more competitors, brand differentiation needed, profitability declines</li><li>Decline: costs not optimal, sales decline, prices fall, profitability depends on efficiency of production and distribution</li></ol>

Using the Product Lifecycle

There are different types of adopters at each product stage:<ol><li>innovators: like taking high risks and have a good discretionary income. Naturally knowledgeable in the product space. Marketing and UX teams should identify them before launch to design for mass scale</li><li>early adopters: influential, thought leaders in the product space, educated in social media, with high level of education and reasonable income</li><li>early majority: risk averse, like to compare products before buying, lower income than the first 2 </li><li>late majority: skeptical, like to use trial and tested products</li><li>laggards: don't like change</li></ol>

Types of product adopters

Having a used product is more important than product market fit and usability

What You’ll Learn: Why adoption and appropriation matter to a product’s success. How to place adoption and appropriation in context with UX and usability work.....

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

problemsolving

Problem Solving

Get Your Product Used: Adoption and Appropriation

<ol><li>The Sidewalk is living for today rather than the future.</li><li>The Slowlane is sacrificing today for tomorrow, The Slowlane takes decades.( Old age )</li><li>The Fastlane is about starting a business, The Fastlane is about retiring while you can fully enjoy it. (Young age)</li></ol>

Sidewalk Vs Slowlane Vs Fast lane

Stop throwing money at another pair of shoes or skincare product, and instead, switch into producer mode. Look at the packaging.How does it feel? What does it do to make you want to buy it? Which words are they using in the ad?Take off your consumer glasses and be open and curious about the world of producing and you’ll be well prepared to start your own business.

Produce, Don’t Consume:

<ol><li>Meaningful relationships with friends and family.</li><li>Being healthy and physically fit.</li><li>Freedom (where the money comes in).</li></ol>

Wealth Trinity

<ul><li>Your roadmap makes up your financial belief system.</li><li>Your vehicle is you. No one can drive the journey but you.</li><li>Your roads are the financial pathways you travel.</li><li>Your Speed is execution and your ability to go from idea to implementation.</li></ul>Note: Sidewalk to poorness, Slowline to mediocrity, and the Fastline to wealth.

Wealth Is Not A Road, But A Road Trip

<ul><li>When you consistently act and bombard the world with your efforts, stuff happens. And that stuff? Sidewalkers interpret it as luck, when it is nothing more than action engaged with better probabilities.</li><li>When you’re accountable to your choices, your alter behavior in the future and take the driver’s seat of your life.</li></ul>

Process Creates Events That Others See As Luck

<ul><li>Money is your army. The more you have, the more they will fight for freedom.</li><li>Thinking never made anyone rich, unless that thinking manifests itself into consistent action toward application of laws that work.</li><li>Live below your means with intent to expand your means.</li><li>Slowlaners seek to minimize expenses while the Fastlaner seeks to maximize income and asset values.</li><li>You have to build a great product or service that starts to produce passive income, even when you’re sleeping.</li></ul>

Freedom = Money

….states that “the more lives you affect in an entity you control, in scale and magnitude, the richer you will become.”Or“Affect millions and make millions.”<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Scale (quantity) creates millions</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Magnitude (quality) creates millions.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Scale (quantity) and magnitude (quality) creates billions.</li></ul>

The Law Of Effection

<ul><li>People don’t choose to be poor. They make poor decisions that slowly assemble into a poorness puzzle.</li><li>The smallest choices made in your daily life create habits and lifestyle that forms process — they are the ones that can make the biggest impact. You can’t decide to “go Fastlane” because that itself is just an event. A Fastlane process is hundreds of choices.</li><li>Value your time poorly and you will be poor.</li></ul>

Choices

<ul><li>The purpose of education within the Fastlane is to amplify the power of the money tree and business system.</li><li>Skills and expertise are waiting just for you. No one drops a book on your lap and gifts knowledge. You have to seek it, process it, and then use it. The acquisition and application of knowledge will make you rich.</li></ul>

Purpose Of Education 

Businesses that provide value win. Businesses that solve problems win profits.You and your business attract money when you stop being selfish and turn your business’s focus from the needs of yourself to the needs of other people.

Hard Work And Commitment Separates The Winners From Losers

Your vehicle needs an ignition, a starter, something that compels you to jump out of bed in the morning challenged to tackle the day. That ignition is passion. You need a passion for something greater. It is different for everybody, but when you find it, you will do anything for it.

Passion

Solve other people’s problems and you will solve your own money problems!Define the Lifestyle: What do you want?Assess the Cost: How much do your dreams cost?Set the Targets: Set the money system and business income targets.Make It Real: Fund it and open it!

Four Steps To Starting:

<ul><li>The owner of an idea is not he who imagines it, but he who executes it.</li><li>The speed of the Fastlane is growing a business exponentially and taking advantage of exploding net income and asset value.</li><li>The key to failure is trying to please everybody.</li><li>Your product/service should standout in the crowd.</li><li>Focus on your business, which is to innovate and win over the hearts and minds of your customers. And when you fill needs and your army of customers grows, something suddenly happens: Everyone follows you.</li></ul>

Innovate And Win Over The Hearts

<ul><li>People are loyal to brands and relationships, not corporations or businesses.</li><li>The first step at building a brand is to have a Unique Selling Proposition or a USP (unique benefit exhibited by a company, service, product or brand that enables it to stand out from competitors).</li><li>If you can arouse emotions in your audience, you will be more likely to convince them to buy.</li></ul>

Businesses Survive, Brands Thrive!

The Fastlane is about building a better system, a better contraption, a better product, or a better “something” that will leverage your work. In the Slowlane, you are the source of heavy lifting, while in the Fastlane, you construct a system that does it for you.

Choose Fastlane !!

“Instead of digging for gold, sell shovels. Instead of taking a class, offer a class. Instead of borrowing money, lend it. Instead of taking a job, hire for jobs. Instead of taking a mortgage, hold a mortgage. Break free from consumption, switch sides, and reorient to the world as producer.”

Go to school, get good grades, graduate, get a good job, save 10%, invest in the stock market…then, someday, when you are, oh, 65 years old, you will be rich but you can’t enjoy at that age…

Is the financial plan of mediocrity -- a dream-stealing, soul-sucking dogma known as "The Slowlane" your plan for creating wealth? You know how it goes; it sounds a lil something like this: "Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich." The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You've been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair -- sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life. Accept the Slowlane as your blueprint for wealth and your financial future will blow carelessly asunder on a sailboat of HOPE: HOPE you can find a job and keep it, HOPE the stock market doesn't tank, HOPE the economy rebounds, HOPE, HOPE, and HOPE. Do you really want HOPE to be the centerpiece for your family's financial plan? Drive the Slowlane road and you will find your life deteriorate into a miserable exhibition about what you cannot do, versus what you can. For those who don't want a lifetime subscription to "settle-for-less" and a slight chance of elderly riches, there is an alternative; an expressway to extraordinary wealth that can burn a trail to financial independence faster than any road out there. Why jobs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, and 40-years of mindless frugality will never make you rich young. Why most entrepreneurs fail and how to immediately put the odds in your favor. The real law of wealth: Leverage this and wealth has no choice but to be magnetized to you. The leading cause of poorness: Change this and you change everything. How the rich really get rich - and no, it has nothing to do with a paycheck or a 401K match. Why the guru's grand deity - compound interest - is an impotent wealth accelerator. Why the guru myth of "do what you love" will most likely keep you poor, not rich. And 250+ more poverty busting distinctions... Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.

books

Books

10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONIs the financial plan of mediocrity -- a dream-stealing, soul-sucking dogma known as &quot;The Slowlane&quot; your plan for creating wealth? You know how it goes; it sounds a lil something like this:&quot;Go to school, get a good job, save 10% of your paycheck, buy a used car, cancel the movie channels, quit drinking expensive Starbucks mocha lattes, save and penny-pinch your life away, trust your life-savings to the stock market, and one day, when you are oh, say, 65 years old, you can retire rich.&quot;The mainstream financial gurus have sold you blindly down the river to a great financial gamble: You've been hoodwinked to believe that wealth can be created by recklessly trusting in the uncontrollable and unpredictable markets: the housing market, the stock market, and the job market. This impotent financial gamble dubiously promises wealth in a wheelchair -- sacrifice your adult life for a financial plan that reaps dividends in the twilight of life. Accept the Slowlane as your blueprint for wealth and your financial future will blow carelessly asunder on a sailboat of HOPE: HOPE you can find a job and keep it, HOPE the stock market doesn't tank, HOPE the economy rebounds, HOPE, HOPE, and HOPE. Do you really want HOPE to be the centerpiece for your family's financial plan?Drive the Slowlane road and you will find your life deteriorate into a miserable exhibition about what you cannot do, versus what you can. For those who don't want a lifetime subscription to &quot;settle-for-less&quot; and a slight chance of elderly riches, there is an alternative; an expressway to extraordinary wealth that can burn a trail to financial independence faster than any road out there.Why jobs, 401(k)s, mutual funds, and 40-years of mindless frugality will never make you rich young. Why most entrepreneurs fail and how to immediately put the odds in your favor. The real law of wealth: Leverage this and wealth has no choice but to be magnetized to you.The leading cause of poorness: Change this and you change everything.How the rich really get rich - and no, it has nothing to do with a paycheck or a 401K match.Why the guru's grand deity - compound interest - is an impotent wealth accelerator.Why the guru myth of &quot;do what you love&quot; will most likely keep you poor, not rich. And 250+ more poverty busting distinctions...Demand the Fastlane, an alternative road-to-wealth; one that actually ignites dreams and creates millionaires young, not old. Change lanes and find your explosive wealth accelerator. Hit the Fastlane, crack the code to wealth, and find out how to live rich for a lifetime.

MJ DeMarco is an accomplished writer whose work has resonated with readers around the world. MJ DeMarco has published several books that explore a range of topics, from fiction to nonfiction, and has received critical acclaim for the ability to weave compelling narratives. MJ DeMarco's writing style is known for its depth and authenticity, and has earned quite a loyal following of readers.

MJ DeMarco

The Millionaire Fastlane

<ul><li>The management upskill begins with building new professional networks. All the studies mention a solid managerial approach will be the cornerstone of the Future of Work.</li><li>For this reason, managers must learn how to be great communicators and coaches to develop their team members through supportive and consultative behaviors before challenging them.</li><li>This is the only way to build upon the Maslow Pyramid to reach the ultimate levels: the collective sense of belonging, and the esteem and self-actualization needs. </li></ul>

Managament upskill and professional networks

When leaders believe in innovation to make the change happen, it’s called transformational leadership. They work on inspirational motivation while challenging their people with trust and respect. Many organizations went through this process successfully during the pandemic.Changing a culture to adapt to the virtual world is about giving a new meaning to the effort that transcends everyday problems.It can be addressing a new market segment with new customers, launching a new product, or simply serving customers better as an underlying purpose.

The hard work of changing company culture in the hybrid world

The majority of people redefined their professional success through work-life balance, mental health, and flexibility – the top three new priorities for most of us.

Redefining professional success

An example of best practice within the team is formalizing the values and expected behaviors in a team contract.<ul><li>For example, showing respect or giving the benefit of the doubt are compelling values in the virtual world to create a shared feeling of safety within the team.</li><li>It helps shut down and reprogram the “catastrophizing” cognitive bias that causes our brains to imagine the worst-case scenario, especially when limited communication or data is missing.</li></ul>It might be counterintuitive, but thinking about the worst doesn’t prepare you at all. Instead, it makes us continually feel bad.

Promote healthy mental behaviors and individual accountability

How upskilling helps businesses adapt to a rapidly changing labour market

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

career

Career

Upskilling: Preparing For The Future

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

How to Upskill Management while Increasing Individual Accountability for an Inspiring Hybrid Culture

Without buy-in from your company’s rank and file, even the cleverest AI-derived model will sit idle and “data-driven decision-making” will just go around in circles. Companies need to start seeing regular people as part of their data strategy. Data teams must work with regular people every day, develop a feel for their problems and opportunities, and embrace their hopes and fears surrounding data, then focus on equipping people with the tools they need to formulate and solve their own problems.

The Key Takeaway

To drive the importance of regular people home, consider the process of completing a data science (big data, analytics, artificial intelligence) project. In general, this requires five steps: understanding the problem, collecting and preparing the data, analyzing that data, formulating the findings, and finally, putting those findings to work. At each step, regular people have a critical role to play — as collaborators, as customers, and as creators of the data used — and there are serious consequences for not including them. Doing each step well depends on regular people.

The Importance Of Regular People

Many managers, unconsciously perhaps, have debilitating pre-conceptions about people. They view them as part of the problem — out-of-date, ill-suited to the rigors of data, and resistant to the new ideas. Large numbers know that data is increasingly important, have great ideas for making improvements, and want to create opportunities for themselves. Engaging them is simply not that difficult.Leaders and companies need to reboot their outlook and see people as part of the solution. Managers need to “start small,” asking people where they see opportunity.

See Regular People as Part of The Solution

Real gains come when companies and leaders start to see data as a means to empower people — a way for them to minimize the mundane parts of their jobs, take a measure of control, unleash their creative juices, learn new skills, lean into the satisfying parts of their jobs, and advance their careers. You will have to adopt a pro-active attitude, provide some encouragement and training, and help.

Data As A Means To Empower People

Companies simply must realign a substantial portion of their data science, quality, architecture, and monetization programs to engage regular people.To do this, data teams must work with regular people every day, develop a feel for their problems and opportunities, and embrace their hopes and fears surrounding data. They must focus less on big data and more on equipping people with the tools they need to formulate and solve their own problems. Data teams must seek joy not in a clever model, but in business results and the successes of those they serve.

Re-Orient Your Data Programs to Get Everyone Involved

Every data project should start with two questions:Who will this effort touch?How do we get them involved as soon as possible?Then ask those people to work with you — and have a good answer when they ask, “what would you like me to do?”

Two Questions Before Any Data Project

A small team of regular people, having been trained and supported by an embedded data manager, sorts out the data it needs to complete its work, measure the quality of that data, identify, then proactively attack the root causes of their data quality issues, making them go away, forever. There is a resonant theme for data teams here — a shift from an “inside-out” to an “outside-in” perspective. And it will lead to a redeployment of personnel: towards strategic problems, towards small data, towards rooting out quality issues, and towards empowerment.

A Better Way Than Cleaning Up Of Data

Regular people are fully involved with data everyday — they are customers of data created upstream and they are creators of data that others will use; they use data to make decisions and complete their work; they are guardians of the company’s data assets; and they can be small data scientists and collaborators, customers, and data creators in larger data science, artificial intelligence, and digital transformation initiatives.

Clarify Expectations and Get on With It

Companies need to design projects around the employees who actually use them.

artificialintelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Your Data Initiatives Can’t Just Be for Data Scientists

While concerns about AI and ethical violations have become common in companies, turning these anxieties into actionable conversations can be tough. With the complexities of machine learning, ethics, and of their points of intersection, there are no quick fixes, and conversations around these issues can feel nebulous and abstract. Getting to the desired outcomes requires learning to talk about these issues differently.

The Premise

Over the past several years, concerns around AI ethics have gone mainstream. The concerns, and the outcomes everyone wants to avoid, are largely agreed upon and well documented. No one wants to push out discriminatory or biased AI. No one wants to be the object of a lawsuit or regulatory investigation for violations of privacy. But once we’ve all agreed that biased, black box, privacy-violating AI is bad, where do we go from here? The question most every senior leader asks is: How do we take action to mitigate those ethical risks?

AI Ethics

Acting quickly to address concerns is admirable, but with the complexities of machine learning, ethics, and of their points of intersection, there are no quick fixes. To implement, scale, and maintain effective AI ethical risk mitigation strategies, companies should begin with a deep understanding of the problems they’re trying to solve. A challenge, however, is that conversations about AI ethics can feel nebulous. The first step, then, should consist of learning how to talk about it in concrete, actionable ways.

Understanding The Problems That Need To Be Solved

Summon a senior-level working group that is responsible for driving AI ethics in your organization. They should have the right skills, experience, and knowledge such that the conversations are well-informed about the business needs, technical capacities, and operational know-how. Involve four kinds of people: technologists, legal/compliance experts, ethicists, and business leaders. Their collective goal is to understand the sources of ethical risks generally, for the industry of which they are members, and for their particular company.

The People Who Need To Be Involved

You need the technologist to assess what is technologically feasible, not only at a per product level but also at an organizational level. That is because, in part, various ethical risk mitigation plans require different tech tools and skills. Knowing where your organization is from a technological perspective can be essential to mapping out how to identify and close the biggest gaps.

The Tech Guys

Legal and compliance experts are there to help ensure that any new risk mitigation plan is compatible and not redundant with existing risk mitigation practices. Legal issues loom particularly large in light of the fact that it’s neither clear how existing laws and regulations bear on new technologies, nor what new regulations or laws are coming down the pipeline.

The Legal Eagles

Ethicists are there to help ensure a systematic and thorough investigation into the ethical and reputational risks you should attend to, not only by virtue of developing and procuring AI, but also those risks that are particular to your industry and/or your organization. Their importance is particularly relevant because compliance with outdated regulations does not ensure the ethical and reputational safety of your organization.

The Path Correctors

Business leaders should help ensure that all risk is mitigated in a way that is compatible with business necessities and goals. Zero risk is an impossibility so long as anyone does anything. But unnecessary risk is a threat to the bottom line, and risk mitigation strategies also should be chosen with an eye towards what is economically feasible.

The Business Leaders

Once the team is in place, here are three crucial conversations to have. <ul><li>One conversation concerns coming to a shared understanding of what goals an AI ethical risk program should be striving for. </li><li>The second conversation concerns identifying gaps between where the organization is now and where it wants to be. </li><li>The third conversation is aimed at understanding the sources of those gaps so that they are comprehensively and effectively addressed.</li></ul>

Three Conversations to Push Things Forward

Any conversation should recognize that legal compliance (like the anti-discrimination law) and regulatory compliance are table stakes. The question to address is: Given that the set of ethical risks is not identical to the set of legal/regulatory risks, what do we identify as the ethical risks for our industry/organization and where do we stand on them?

Define Your Organization’s Ethical Standard for AI

There are various technical “solutions” or “fixes” to AI ethics problems. A number of software products from big tech to startups to non-profits help data scientists apply quantitative metrics of fairness to their model outputs. Tools like LIME and SHAP aid data scientists in explaining how outputs are arrived at in the first place. But virtually no one thinks these technical solutions, or any technological solution for that matter, will sufficiently mitigate the ethical risk and transform your organization into one that meets its AI ethics standards.

Identify the Gaps Between Where You Are Now and What Your Standards Call For

Your AI ethics team should determine where their respective limits are and how their skills and knowledge can complement each other. This means asking:<ul><li>What, exactly, is the risk we’re trying to mitigate?</li><li>How does software/quantitative analysis help us mitigate that risk?</li><li>What gaps do the software/quantitative analyses leave?</li><li>What kinds of qualitative assessments do we need to make, when do we need to make them, on what basis do we make them, and who should make them, so that those gaps are appropriately filled?</li></ul>

Know The Limits

Many conversations around bias in AI start with giving examples and immediately talking about “biased data sets.” Sometimes this will slide into talk about “implicit bias” or “unconscious bias,” which are terms borrowed from psychology that lack a clear and direct application to “biased data sets.” But it’s not enough to say, “the models are trained on biased data sets” or “the AI reflects our historical societal discriminatory actions and policies.”

Understand the Complex Sources of The Problems and Operationalize Solutions

Productive conversations on ethics should go deeper than broad stroke examples descried by specialists and non-specialists alike. Your organization needs the right people at the table so that its standards can be defined and deepened. Your organization should fruitfully marry its quantitative and qualitative approaches to ethical risk mitigation so it can close the gaps between where it is now and where it wants it to be. And it should appreciate the complexity of the sources of its AI ethical risks.

The Bottom Line

Move from abstract concerns to actionable plans.

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Technology & The Future

Ethics and AI: 3 Conversations Companies Need to Have

We’ve all made mistakes at work before. If you dropped the ball on an important project, or done something to lose credibility and trust at work, there are steps you can take to build it back.After you’ve done the basics (you apologized, you owned up to your mistakes, and hopefully learned from it), the author suggests taking the following steps:<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Level-set and manage expectations meticulously.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Balance under-promising and over-delivering.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Focus on small, quick wins.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Reassess your situation.</li></ul>

Get Your Credibility Back: Key Takeaways

It’s important to understand that when employees “fail,” it’s often because they don’t meet the expectations that were set for them. You can avoid this by making those expectations clearer from the start of your next project. Kick it off by ensuring that you and all of the stakeholders are <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/level-setting-expectations-relationship-management-diane/">on the same page</a>.

Manage Expectations Meticulously

Asking probing questions will help you identify your goals and ensure that you have the support and resources you need to reach them.Namely, you will want to find out:<ul><li>Who: Who is your customer?</li><li>What: What are your goals?</li><li>Where: Are there specific geographic or regional considerations to take into account (if applicable)?</li><li>When: What is the expected timeline for key deliverables?</li><li>How: How does your manager want you to communicate this information? How would your teammates prefer to collaborate throughout the project?</li></ul>

Ask Probing Questions

When you fail to meet someone’s expectations at work, you may feel the need to prove yourself the next time you work with them. If you’re not careful, this can lead to you overcompensating and taking on more than you can realistically handle. A better strategy is to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2017/08/15/why-you-should-under-promise-and-over-deliver-but-not-by-too-much/?sh=da00e2249285">under-promise and over-deliver.</a>When you’re coming from a level of damaged trust, exceeding promises has the potential to rebuild credibility and positively impact a damaged reputation.

Under-Promise and Over-Deliver

Once you set expectations and establish clear objectives and timelines, shift your focus to accomplishing small, quick wins. In a <a href="https://hbr.org/2009/01/the-quick-wins-paradox">study</a> surveying over 5,400 newly promoted leaders and their managers, the one attribute that stood out among high performers was a strong focus on results.  A collective quick win — a visible, high-impact contribution that adds measurably and meaningfully to the success of a project, and therefore, to the success of your team — can rebuild your reputation as a high performer and reassure your manager and teammates of your value.

Focus on Small, Quick Wins

Take a step back every couple of months to assess whether you’re making progress. The amount of time it takes to fully rebuild your reputation will vary based on a host of factors, like your manager’s personality, the magnitude of the previous failure, and more. But in those check-ins you have with yourself, you need to see progress. It can be slow and incremental, but it needs to be there.

Reassess Your Situation

Broken trust and credibility are one of the hardest things to regain in any relationship. Be patient with yourself, and give yourself some grace. We all make mistakes. We should all be given the opportunity to redeem ourselves and use our failures as milestones for our development. With a concerted effort of intentional, strategic actions, it’s possible to regain trust — from others and from yourself.

When you’re new to the workforce, a big mistake can push you back to square one.

So, You Dropped the Ball. How Do You Get Your Credibility Back?

SAAS is a means by which applications are delivered over the internet, saving you from the burden of installation, management and continuous updates that comes with the traditional purchase and use of a software or application.

The Three Biggest Reasons Why SAAS Startups Fail

<ol><li>Lack of Market</li><li>Poor Management team</li><li>Product Problems</li></ol>

Why SAAS Startups Fail

Loving a business idea is not enough to make it successful and a lot of SAAS startups have had to experience the heartbreak that comes with this lesson. CBI insights report that about 42% of cloud startups stop operations due to this cause. I call it the passion trap and to avoid falling into it, you must ensure that your idea fills a market need. Successful entrepreneurs do this by;<ul><li>Obsessively emphasizing the market</li><li>striving to know the market</li><li>Executing based on their market’s opportunity</li></ul>

1. Lack of market

Visionary managers understand that for a startup to thrive, it must focus on value creation before profits.Today’s profit-motivated entrepreneurs find it easy to gather a team of freelance developers on Upwork or Fiverr to make their product but once the product is past its concept stage they realize that a lot more time, money, patience and industry is still needed before it could be profitable. Disappointed, they abandon the project.Hubspot was founded in 2006 at MIT, yet when CMO Mike Volpe was asked in 2010 whether or not the company was profitable, he gave a remarkable reply:

2. Poor Management team

‘HubSpot could be profitable if we wanted to, our current revenue run rate is in excess of $20 million. We just believe that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of businesses that we can help transform with better marketing (beyond the 3,000+ that use our product today). We want to continue to grow fast and be the leader in this market, so we are investing in even more rapid growth. There are many things that worry me, but our ability to be profitable is not one of them’

Shopify remains the leading platform for drop-shipping and e-commerce hosting for entrepreneurs because it does what it says, fast and easy. Competitors who have sprouted over the years have failed because they were unable to replicate this convenience and simplicity in their products, leading to bad user experiences and ultimately business failure.As a SAAS entrepreneur, you should ensure that your product is without bugs, lags, and security risks are mitigated to the barest minimum. Also, you should ensure that your product has the necessary quality and value needed to compete with rivals.

3. Product Problems

These ideas contain valuable advise for small business and tech startups.

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Can Your New Idea Compete? 11 Criteria to Help You Assess

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The Millionaire Fastlane

How to Upskill Management while Increasing Individual Accountability for an Inspiring Hybrid Culture

Your Data Initiatives Can’t Just Be for Data Scientists

Ethics and AI: 3 Conversations Companies Need to Have

So, You Dropped the Ball. How Do You Get Your Credibility Back?

The Three Biggest Reasons Why SAAS Startups Fail

How to Build a Second Brain - Tiago Forte Style — Keep Productive

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.