Commercial Intelligence – Page 129 – Public Intelligence Blog

By Kirsten Korosec | November 8, 2013, 9:11 AM PST

The legal U.S. marijuana market is projected to grow 64 percent to $2.34 billion by 2014 and exceed $10 billion by 2018, making it one of the fastest growing industries in the country, according to ArcView Market Research.

The pace of growth is even expected to eclipse the expansion of the global smartphone market, ArcView Group CEO Troy Dayton said in the company’s second State of Legal Marijuana Markets report released this week.

The recent legalization of marijuana use by adults in Colorado and Washington is largely what’s driving the market expansion. Adult use in Washington and Colorado is projected to add $359 million and $208 million to their respective markets in 2014.

Fourteen more states including Alaska, Oregon, Hawaii, Maine, California and Arizona are expected to adopt legal adult use laws in the next five years, which would accelerate the market’s growth rate, the report says.

California is already the largest state market at $980 million, according to the report. And the state doesn’t even have an adult use law on the books. California only has a medical marijuana law.

Continue reading “SmartPlanet: Marijuana Next Great US Industry?”

2013/11/092013/11/09

Spanish Dancer: Business Plans as Microsoft Fiction

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ethics

Innosight Business plans should start with the value to the customer not Microsoft fiction–Scott Anthony's latest in HBR.

Business Plans and Other Works of Fiction

Scott D. Anthony

The purpose of a business, Peter Drucker famously said, is to create a customer. Yet, rather than creating customers, many innovators create a fantastical piece of what you might call Microsoft fiction.

This hit home for me during a recent client project. I was working with a team that had been tasked by the company’s CEO to develop a new venture in a promising market space. Its three members had been working for about six weeks. They’d conducted detailed research, talking both to prospective customers and numerous industry experts. And then they used Microsoft’s most popular products to produce what they thought was a business plan. But it actually was a kind of fiction built in three chapters: an Excel spreadsheet with sophisticated analyses showing breathtaking financial potential, a PowerPoint document blending facts and figures with compelling videos and pictures, and a Word document summarizing all of it in prose so lucid Malcolm Gladwell would shed a tear.

Still, it isn’t a business until you create a customer. After listening to the team describe its work, I asked a simple question: “Who is your first customer?”

The team turned to page 12 of chapter 2 of their Microsoft fiction, proudly displaying a PowerPoint slide citing detailed demographic figures. The slide said that 60% of the target market would be 18-to-34-year-old males with annual incomes within a certain range.

So I asked the question again. Instead of summary facts and figures, I wanted the team to be very precise. What is the customer’s name? Where does he live? What does he look like? What are his hopes, dreams, and aspirations? What does he love? What drives him crazy? How would the team’s idea fit into his life?

Read the rest at Harvard Business Review.

Scott Anthony is the managing partner of Innosight.

2013/11/092013/11/09

Berto Jongman: Bits, Bytes, & Stuff 1.1

Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

9 Types of Intelligence – Improving

Al Qaeda Brits Fighting in Syria – Interview

Big Data: Resist the Siren Song

Fukushima Water Tanks Flawed

Pakistani Nukes — Bhutto Kept in the Dark

Radicalization in the Digital Era (15 cases)

Saudi Millions for Syrian Rebel Brigades

Technologies for the Future

Terror Boom in North Africa

Zubaydah Guantanamo Diary

2013/11/09

Jean Lievens: Michael Porter on Businesses Solving Problems, Profit as Sign of Sustainable Solution — Never Mind the Details (e.g. True Cost Economics)

Commercial Intelligence

Michael Porter: Why business can be good at solving social problems

Robert Jones

It appears that Michael Porter is having an attack of conscience after recognizing the results of his life's work. “Where are all the resources?” he asks, and then answers, “In business.” Well, ummm…DUHHH! It took him his whole career to figure this out? After his entire life of saying, “Profit is the magic” for business, suddenly he thinks that “business profit from solving social problems” ‘s the answer for mankind's social problems. “Take all this profit and redeploy it into social problems…” vs. “Take the massive social issues and make them profitable to solve…” Right. I don't suppose Porter has looked at the private prison industry lately. Businesses don't solve problems. They manage problems, and treat problems (like cancer), but solving problems is a one-and-done, and that's just not what business does.

2013/11/09

Penguin: South Africa Opts Out of Predatory IMF/WTO System

01 Poverty, 03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government

Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University, was Chairman of President Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers and served as Senior Vice President and Chief Economist of the World Bank. His most recent book is The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers our Future.

South Africa Breaks Out

NEW YORK – International investment agreements are once again in the news. The United States is trying to impose a strong investment pact within the two big so-called “partnership” agreements, one bridging the Atlantic, the other the Pacific, that are now being negotiated. But there is growing opposition to such moves.

South Africa has decided to stop the automatic renewal of investment agreements that it signed in the early post-apartheid period, and has announced that some will be terminated. Ecuador and Venezuela have already terminated theirs. India says that it will sign an investment agreement with the US only if the dispute-resolution mechanism is changed. For its part, Brazil has never had one at all.

There is good reason for the resistance. Even in the US, labor unions and environmental, health, development, and other nongovernmental organizations have objected to the agreements that the US is proposing.

Continue reading “Penguin: South Africa Opts Out of Predatory IMF/WTO System”

2013/11/09

Eagle: Google Testing Program To Track Everyone Everywhere

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption

300 Million Talons... — 300 Million Talons…

Google Is Testing A Program That Tracks You Everywhere You Go

Richard Feloni Nov 7 2013, 3:29 AM 41 2096

Google wants to know your every move

Google is beta-testing a program that tracks users’ purchasing habits by registering brick-and-mortar store visits via smartphones, according to a report from Digiday.

Google can access user data via Android apps or their Apple iOS apps, like Google search, Gmail, Chrome, or Google Maps.

If a customer is using these apps while he shops or has them still running in the background, Google’s new program pinpoints the origin of the user data and determines if the customer is in a place of business.

Google gets permission to do this kind of tracking when Android users opt in to the “location services” option in their smartphone’s options menu and when iOS users agree to allow “location services” for Google apps like Gmail and Google Maps.

The program was hinted at in an AdWords blog post from Oct. 1 regarding Google’s new “estimated total conversions” initiative. A “conversion” in this sense is a purchase, and Google is developing ways to track users across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. Google also mentioned that tracking conversions via phone calls is in the works, but has yet to release details.

Business Insider has reported on how Google is using cross-device conversion measurements in its war with Facebook for advertising supremacy. When advertisers are allowed to know as much as possible about users’ purchasing habits, they can target their ads more efficiently and reap the benefits. Measuring conversions is also important because it assures advertisers that their purchases are resulting in increased product sales.

Mobile users who search for products on their phones buy quickly after researching them, according to a Google/Nielsen report released on Tuesday. Consumers spend 15+ hours every week researching products, and more than half make their purchase within an hour after looking it up.

2013/11/09

SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

This is excellent news. The cost of solar is coming down like a skier on a slope. If we took the same money we have willingly been spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, to no good purpose whatever, and put it to work converting the entire country off of carbon energy, we would create enormous prosperity. Unemployment would drop to 3-4%. Every energy conversion — animals and wind to coal, coal to petroleum — has created enormous wealth from the top down. We should be embracing this transformation not resisting it. And that's without even considering the effect on climate change. The struggle is not going to be technological, but how old forms die.

First Solar Reports Largest Quarterly Decline In CdTe Module Cost Per-Watt Since 2007
Clean Technica

Click through and look at the geographical distribution of poverty in the U.S. You will see on the maps that persistent poverty exists overwhelmingly in Red value states. I think this is happening because the white minority has made their retaining power their first priority, easily trumping social wellness. These are also the most violent, and the most religious states. They are controlled by the Caucasian Theocratic Ri! ght. The failure of the Right's social policies is glaringly obvious by any social measure one chooses. Why is almost no one talking about this?

Geography of Poverty
USDA Economic Research Service

This is the latest on the Prison Privatization trend showing how it is creating the New American Slavery. I find it amazing that this is going on, and nobody talks about it. Two years ago when I first really saw this trend, and wrote about it, I thought people would be outraged. (See: The New American Slavery. http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2811%2900043-7/fulltext)! . They aren't however, and 2.4 million men and women are in prison. Change has been very hard.

Non-Violent Offenders Fill Jails in Prison Nation’s Worst State: Louisiana
STEVEN ROSENFELD – AlterNet (U.S.)

Once again: Water is destiny. This excellent report spells out just what we face. Click through to see the charts and maps.

No Water, No Life
VL BAKER – Daily Kos