It was great to meet with MBA students visiting from D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. I had a chance to share insights into the UAE startup ecosystem and engage in some interesting discussions with the students & faculty. I’m certainly looking forward to hearing more about some of their ventures in the near future. The main takeaway I felt from the session was their eye opening exposure to the modus operandi of how the initiatives being undertaken ...
Blog Posts
After the recent Step Conference, where I was busy recording Streams of Progress episodes and mentoring entrepreneurs & startups, I received the following email from one of the entrepreneurs I met with. It’s very gratifying to receive a thank you note from someone I’ve mentored, even if it was just a quick 15 minutes of my time. If my ideas or insights gave them something new to consider, I feel it was well worth it. Plus I feel those who ...
Trust is accelerated in the virtual world. We hail a ride from a stranger. We swipe to go out with a stranger. We buy into non-existing products on the promise of what they could become. Our trust in the platform imbues the trust into the users. These platforms are now the gatekeepers of our trust. We believe in the power of technology. The rate in which we trust one another is rapidly accelerated. Trust begins with people, but is empowered ...
January often represents a new start for people. But then plans get pushed back, and we don’t start. The best part about starting is you can just start. Doesn’t need to be big. Doesn’t need to be perfect. Just start.
Many of us are used to the idea of mimicry as a ways to formulate new ideas. Biomimicry is a popular form of mimicry many seem to know about; as the Biomimicry Institute defines it, “an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies.” However there is another form of mimicry we often see, which is vilified due to outliers to the rule; which is what I like to call Competitive Mimicry. Competitive ...
On June 16 2017, Jeff Bezos tweeted out asking the public for ideas on how to engage in philanthropy in an immediate (short term) impactful way. Here are my responses to his tweet:- Immediate & Now, Longer Term and Extreme Evolution. #Amazon #Idea pic.twitter.com/BvQk28ei6v — Mehrad (@viaMehrad) June 16, 2017 And the follow up: In light of Whole Food, expansion of immediate results and noticeable impact ideas. #WholeFoods #Local #Farms #Workshops @JeffBezos pic.twitter.com/ryqdLVj0eX — Mehrad (@viaMehrad) June 17, 2017
Previously, I looked at various Mesh Networks that have been used for Communications uses through Stand-Alone Apps (i.e. FireChat) and Consumer Friendly Devices (i.e. GoTenna) – the next level of evolving the mesh network would be to do with underutilized processing power such as an idle Playstation or Xbox at home and hints at the potential of what a device like Nvidia Shield can leverage. My thoughts are something along the lines of Cloud Processing meets the Mesh Network, or what ...
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Mesh Networks and their potential to unlock innovative solutions through the decentralized network they create and represent. There are various use applications of mesh networks that entrepreneurs and startups have made into digital products. One of the first products that received it’s fifteen minutes of fame was Firechat, which in September 2014 was used by protestors in Hong Kong’s “umbrella movement”. The app let users send messages to one another without cellular data or a wifi internet connection, relying ...
I recently had a chance to do some work sessions for the UAE Telecommunications and Regulation Authority (TRA) regarding technology trends and disruptive innovation that are likely to make us re think our entire education curriculum. Some of the research presented was based off the extensive work previously done with my involvement with Honeybird while other was a summarized collection of the latest education trends I’ve been reviewing and been tracking for some time. The TRA, in partnership with the Ministry of Education and ...
Once again, another airline incident highlights how the old world mentality of how business’s own failure leads to them punishing their own paying customers. As my previous piece about refund policies highlighted, companies need to stop burdening their own failures onto their customers. We live in a very socially connected environment and although many corporate entities claim they understand that, they truly don’t seem to understand that such a connected world requires them to act with some empathy. Julia Underwood, a ...