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Analysis of Saudi Arabia’s revenue model disruption and technology trends within Jordan

While speaking with a Saudi traveler in the desert of Wadi Rum, Jordan, its been observed that disruption of Saudi Arabia’s revenue model has forced much domestic changes within the country.

The prince has brought about drastic reforms in response to the disruption much to the chagrin of traditionalist hardliners. Women are now given the rights to drive vehicles and also work. For the first time ever Saudi’s were able to see Circ Du Soleil within their country. It can be speculated that these reforms are intended to double the total number of potential workforce in the country and get the thought process of the workforce more in sync with the rest of the world as Saudi Arabia gears its economy for a world that is no longer dependent on oil for energy.

Disruption examined using Micheal Porter’s 5 forces framework

Substitutes

The shale oil innovation has put a max cap on oil prices around the world at USD80 per barrel. Traditionally oil dependent countries within the OPEC could artificially restrict oil supply to drive up oil prices. However, post the era of innovation when such strategy employed, shale oil producers will immediately start pumping supplies into the market when price becomes viable.

New entrants

The Paris Climate agreement has catalyst a movement to shift away from oil to renewable sources of energy. Already China and India have became large players of solar energy. With innovation within this sector continuously driving down costs, it is likely the world will see an inflection point whereby solar energy becomes cheaper to produce than fossil fuel based energy.

Implications

A paradigm shift will occur amongst Saudi’s in relation to their attitude towards women as independent individuals with economic autonomy as opposed to individuals whose sole function is to be on the receiving side of male attention and care.

It remains unclear the impact of social media on the the upcoming shift within population.

Its also been observed via various sources within the Bay Area that Saudi Arabia is increasingly turning to investments in technology to drive the next stage of their economic growth.

Saudi Arabia is seen as the economic trend leader within region. It is likely their eventual model will get mimicked by other oil-dependent middle eastern countries.

Other notable observations within Jordan

Asian companies like Hyundai, Toyota, Kia, Nissan have been observed to dominate the region in terms of manufactured cars. The only other notable brands that are not Asian are Mercedes and Ford.

Android and Asian companies like Samsung, Huawei and Sony have been observed to dominate the region in terms of mobile computing.

Facebook is the only social network that has been observed to deeply penetrate the region. Majority of folks utilize WatsApp. Facebook is less commonly seen on phones of users.

User huddled over Android device in Wadi Rum. To understand their needs, technologist need to become more keenly familiar with the Android OS.

Related references

  • Only the paranoid survives, Andy Grove
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Reflections on constructing virtuous cycles applications with higher order heuristics

When explaining to Jan at the overstay hostel on the application of meditation this morning, it occurries to me the possibility of applying higher order heuristics to form virtuous chains which can be latter form into cycles.

Below is an example of a simple virtuous cycle constructed based on 3 higher order heuristics I have across and am familiar with.

  1. Mindfulness
  2. Reasoning from first principles
  3. Application of the 80/20 rule
  4. Application of small wins to build new habit cycles

Heuristic 1 brings to awareness background processes running in the head that are currently hogging on to CPU cycles.

Heuristics 2 allows for critical examination and possible termination of identified background process.

Heuristics 3 states that attaining fluency in a domain requires only 20% of the effort while attaining mastery in the domain takes up 80%.

Heuristics 4 states that it is possible to construct exercises to train the mind towards fluency in a new domain with the spare CPU capacity freed up by heuristic 2.

Thereafter one goes back to heuristics 1 to repeat the reprogramming iteration.

Related references

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Insights from Val of Totango

Customers consider their engagement with a business as a one on one relationship while businesses consider their engagement with a customer as purely transactional. This divide is the cause of a lot of unsatisfied customers.

When purely operating within the transactional paradigm, the business is motivated to shave operating overheads. This results in the customer being forced to engage with a whole bunch of bots before they get the opportunity to actually interact with a person. And even then, they are forced to repeat the communication of their needs as they get transferred from one person to another within the organization.

As mentioned by Seth Godin, it is important to avoid the pitfalls of falling into purely operating from the transactional paradigm and attempt to stay the course of operating from the relationship paradigm. Technology should be used to enable the operator to more deeply engage with the customer rather than automating out of existence the human to human contact.

Further references

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Reflections for the evening on learning

Listening as a discipline

The phrase “when the student is ready the teacher appears” stems not from the pseudo “law of attraction” but from the fact that having an available teacher sitting in front of the student is pretty useless unless the student himself is ready to start listening and start the lesson. It can be attributed to the fact active listening is not a commonly practiced skill-set since most are too pre-occupied with their own self-esteem due to deep rooted insecurities.

Applicable Chinese idiom: the best medicine taste really bitter, the most helpful words are often unpleasant to hear.

Operating from first principles

As a heuristic, it can be readily applied in multiple domains. A few critical ones identified thus far:

Lifestyle as a configuration

The concept of a home when examined critically can be decomposed into multiple different functions. When the concept is unpacked, it is possible to discard functions that are not utilized and paid for to remove redundant resource deployment.

Identify as a figment of imagination

The notion of self is a figment of imagination. When examined critically, what objectively exists is but a steady stream of sensation that comes into the field of consciousness through one of the senses. It is mistaken to believe the sum of these sensations would at any point culminate into a tangible fixed identity. Culture, beliefs, values, norms and meaning; second order abstractions built onto of this shaky foundation should be critically examined.

Consciousness is the only phenomena that is indisputable.

Emotions

Labelled feelings like any of the eight below are abstractions one step removed from what has actually occurred.

  • Fear
  • Anger
  • Sadness
  • Joy
  • Disgust
  • Surprise
  • Trust
  • Anticipation

Examined objectively what occurred are patterns of sensations that came into the field of consciousness.

Further references

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Insights from lunch with Jamie

On Apple

Steve Jobs was working at an apple orchard for a period of time and her resolved to just eating apples for two whole weeks

At the end of the two weeks, as a by product of his diet he was able to achieve an extremely heightened level of awareness. He had been pursuing the altering of his biology through food intake ever since,

He would conduct food experiments on himself as well as his staff at Apple by ordering only specific items to be made available in the Apple canteen. Once he ordered only vegetarian food to be made available. There were huge protest and he thus back down by allowing grass fed beef.

His cancer was initially curable but delay through experiments with attempting cure via various diets led him to the eventual terminal stage of cancer before he finally seemed actual treatment.

On being a teacher

Being part of the journey towards a learner’s moment of epiphany bring a tremendous amount of satisfaction.

Unlike US, teachers in Korea is revered

On being of mixed descent in an American society

Struggles with resolving cognitive dissonance associated with identity has consumed the major bulk of attention and energy.

Koreans back in Korea does not consider her one of theirs. White amongsts Americans considered her an outsider. A second class citizen in your own country.

Realized the importance of not having to accept what does not need to be accepted. Instead of accepting what society prescibes, define your own identity based on your own core values.

In times of hardship Mexican and Asian families come together and are able to pull through tough times. This is not the case with African blacks. Generations of slavery has served to dilute family ties amongst this racial group.

 

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Ideation process

  1. Gather qualitative data through user interviews
  2. Gather historical quantitative behavioral and segmentation data if any
  3. define problem statements
  4. define personas
  5. Prioritize personas base on segment size and organization strategy/mission fit
  6. Prioritize problem statements based on problem and product feature fit
  7. generate many design concept variants  as different approaches to tackling problem
  8. curate and prioritize them as agile stories
  9. implement base feature set
  10. roll out to user base
  11. validate outstanding hypothesis to gain visibility
  12. iterate on results
  13. head back to step 1

External references

  • User centric design high level – http://garyteh.com/2018/08/tim-on-user-centric-design/
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Reflection this morning on profiles

A profile is essentially a bio-chemical based system. When gearing for a specific outcome, it is important to examine its configuration at all levels to remove redundant attributes to free up CPU cycles for performance effectiveness. 

The goal of a practitioner is thus to consistently work on the discipline of self-mastery.

Levels of available profile configuration

  • Behavior
  • routines
  • Habit
  • Personality
  • Identity
  • Worldview
  • Beliefs

 

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Reflections for the evening

Balancing the acoustics of a social venue to ensure its lively is very hard. A lively venue is constantly titillating between the extreme ends of dead and overly rowdy. Control of the balance are via indirect means like choice material use for walls, ceiling and floor, height of ceiling, seating space between groups and sound system bass and tremble.

Given two possible scenarios, the first being winning a lottery on day one and then losing the entire amount of money the very next day, the second being nothing happened on day one and day two. Suppose the subject chooses to experience scenario one instead of two, the only possible explanation for his behavior would be that he is a drug addict.

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Tim on doing manual sentiment analysis

  1. To read through the comments and reviews users of competitors’ product leave publicly
  2. to extract unique recurring keywords and themes used by the users in their reviews
  3. through these keywords parse out the themes they imply
  4. start thinking of ideas for your own product would contribute towards furthering relevant these thematic experiences
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Friday morning coincidence

I was driving to Edmodo this morning when SIRI recited to me  the section of the book on the Muses and the higher spiritual planes. I was stopped at the intersection just shortly after SIRI mentioned the vision the author had of becoming one with an eagle during his meditation when I saw this giant bird with a great wing span landing to perch on lamppost that I was about to drive under.

I was the very first time I saw such a bird in this parts of town. Must be a coincidence.

I wonder if Seth Godin’s recommendation of this book was resultant of similar experience he had when reading this book