Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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technology

How “The Cloud” Can Empower Your Small Business

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One of the greatest products of human society is the marketplace. Webster defines it as a place where goods and services are offered for sale.

Over millennia, innovations took markets from local to global, and now to the 21st-century iteration – virtual. Virtual markets are powered by “cloud computing,” aka “the cloud,” and accessed via the Internet and a handy interface program presented on a screen of some size.

Historically, as trade expanded markets, products led the way because services were difficult to convey to the last mile of consumption. But technology has helped services catch up, and now digital services are delivered efficiently from the cloud. And more than anything else, this last reality is helping small businesses compete and grow in ways that were formerly the domain of larger companies.

Here are five cloud-based resource categories that help your small business operate more efficiently, competitively, and profitably. [Continue Reading]

It’s the Digital Age – Ethically Speaking, Things Here Are Different

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As arrogant occupants of 21st-century Earth, who can rightly boast of creating exciting innovations, like the computer, talking paint, and the margarita blender, it serves us to believe we’re also the more enlightened generation.

But honesty demands an acknowledgment that contemporary applications of wisdom, morality and ethical behavior are in fact derivative of concepts first proposed long ago by the ancients.

Consider the 10,000-year-old Chinese wisdom, I Ching, The Book of Changes. Then there are the 5,000-year-old Upanishads from India. And of course, the new kid on the block, the four-millennia-old Mosaic Laws (Thou shalt not …). Indeed, no wisdom is handier than that of King Solomon, from the first millennium BCE in Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Psalms.

It must be noted that much of this awesome introspection and self-awareness was first contemplated at a time when receding Ice Age glaciers were still carving Scotland’s Loch Ness and the Great Lakes of North America, on the threshold of the written word.

Alas, ethically and morally speaking, we moderns are merely the new models, not necessarily the better ones. Hold that thought.  [Continue Reading]

Internet Genesis Chapter 1, verses 1-3: And it was good.

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Internet Genesis (1961-1974): Chapter 1, verse 1: On the first day, The Genius Cluster said, “Let there be a network of networks.” And they saw that it was good and named it “The Internet.”

Verse 2: On the second day, The Cluster said, “Let there be structure.” And so it was that the three building blocks – now known as the World Wide Web – were formed and mounted on The Internet:

  • HTTP, a computer language that ultimately turned code into a lever that regular people could use (like a website),
  • direct messaging,
  • and email.

Verse 3: On the third day, seeing that their creations were good, The Cluster rested.

For many generations – okay, about two – the Internet and the WWW flourished with few changes until one day a heretic said, “Let’s connect on Twitter.” [Continue Reading]

Your Blockchain close encounter of the first kind

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This is the third article in a series about Blockchain technology and its implications. The first was an introduction, and the second was how Blockchain works and its role in creating digital trust. This article is about your likely first contact. 

As small businesses have increasingly become vertically integrated with Big Business customers, they’ve had to step up their Main-Street-Mom-and-Pop game to become more sophisticated while continuing to be nimble, quick, versatile and efficient. With this integration, larger customers have notified smaller partners of their evolving expectations, as driven by macro events and trends.

Consequently, over the past 25 years, millions of small businesses have received letters requiring compliance with four of those macro markers: the first was about new quality standards (e.g. ISO 9000), the second was about Y2K preparation, the third was about cyber-security standards and practices, and the most recent is about sustainability/climate change expectations. In addition to ongoing compliance, these expectations accumulated as elements of future bid specifications.

The next expectation “letter” may be your business’s close encounter of the first kind with Blockchain. A larger customer will inform you that future business won’t be established with an inert, analog contract you’ll sign and return, but rather using a “Smart Contract” powered by one of the Blockchain platforms. If you haven’t been keeping up with Blockchain business applications, that will be a maddening, expensive and potentially perilous moment. You just got T-boned by a Quantum Leap Challenge because, as you should know by now, you can’t get up-to-speed on Blockchain overnight.

Now that you’re on notice, let’s get you ready with a few likely first-use Blockchain applications.

[Continue Reading]

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