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Netflix, Inc. is a provider of on-demand Internet streaming media available to viewers in all of North America , South America and parts of Europe , and of flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States, where mailed DVDs are sent via Permit Reply Mail. The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California. It started its subscription-based service in 1999. By 2009, Netflix was offering a collection of 100,000 titles on DVD and had surpassed 10 million subscribers.As of September 2014, Netflix has subscribers in over 40 countries, with intentions of expanding their services in unreached countries .On February 25, 2007, Netflix delivered its billionth DVD. In April 2011, Netflix had 23.6 million subscribers in the United States and over 26 million worldwide. By 2011, the total digital revenue for Netflix reached at least $1.5 billion. On October 23, 2012, however, Netflix reported an 88% decline in third-quarter profits. In January 2013, Netflix reported that it had added two million U.S. customers during the fourth quarter of 2012 with a total of 27.1 million U.S. streaming customers, and 29.4 million total streaming customers. In addition, revenue was up 8% to $945 million for the same period.As of mid-March 2013, Netflix had 33 million subscribers. That number increased to 36.3 million subscribers in April 2013. As of September 2013, for that year's third quarter report, Netflix reported its total of global streaming subscribers at 40.4 million . By the fourth quarter of 2013, Netflix reported 33.1 million U.S. subscribers. By the second quarter of 2014, there were more than 50 million subscribers globally.On January 16, 2014, the nomination of The Square for an Academy Award became the first ever nomination for a Netflix original production. Wikipedia.

News: GlobeNewswire, Health
Site: globenewswire.com

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., May 30, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- via OTC PR WIRE -- Nutra Pharma Corporation (OTC: NPHC), a biotechnology company marketing Nyloxin® and Pet Pain-Away™ in the over-the-counter (OTC) pain management market, announced today that the iRemedy Healthcare Companies has added the entire Nyloxin product line to their marketplace. "We are pleased to be working with iRemedy to expand the marketing of Nyloxin," explained Rik J Deitsch, Chairman and CEO of Nutra Pharma Corporation. "We have only recently brought the Nyloxin product line back under our control and updated both the Nyloxin website and the Nutra Pharma corporate website. These efforts to increase internet awareness will continue as we join other marketing groups to greatly expand our reach to educate consumers about Nyloxin and get the product into the hands of those who need it most," he continued. "We will also be working with iRemedy to increase the visibility of Nyloxin in the medical space in an effort to educate healthcare professionals about the power of Nyloxin as an analgesic of choice," he concluded. By adding Nyloxin to the iRemedy vendor network, Nutra Pharma will have the ability to process orders, access sales channels, gain promotion online with paid ads and social media, and work with thousands of independent medical representatives targeting medical practices, hospitals and other healthcare providers. The iRemedy vendor program includes infrastructure services like online promotions, order capture, order fulfillment, and can be extended to include marketing and sales team development. "This marketplace eCommerce approach, one that is built on quality control and compliance, is revolutionizing healthcare by providing market access to emerging device, drug and supply companies. Just as Amazon, Netflix and iTunes revolutionized their markets by creating efficient and accessible distribution communities, iRemedy is bringing marketplace efficiency to the U.S. healthcare market," stated Tony Paquin, CEO of iRemedy. "We're excited to be working with Nutra Pharma and we know that providing people alternatives to narcotics-based pain relief medication is necessary for good communal health. That's why we love this product and we're glad to have it as part of the iRemedy family," he concluded. Nyloxin® is a safe, non-narcotic, and non-addictive Homeopathic pain reliever for the relief of pain without impairing cognitive function. Nyloxin® offers several benefits as pain relievers and anti-inflammatory agents. Nyloxin® has a well-defined safety profile. Since the early 1930s, the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API), Asian cobra venom, has been studied in more than 46 human clinical studies. About iRemedy Healthcare Companies, Inc. iRemedy is a privately-held healthcare technology and product distribution company that works with industry leaders, including Medline, McKesson, large hospitals, medical practices and GPOs to bring data-driven intelligence to the U.S. medical supply chain. The iRemedy platform is a 'smart' ecommerce solution based on the proprietary iRemedy SKU Data Platform that includes product distribution services. This platform combines transaction, billing, medical record and other data to create a more intelligent product SKU. iRemedy's solutions combine the power of ecommerce and full supply chain fulfillment services with AI and EHR-integrated capabilities to bring diversity of suppliers, price transparency, predictive analysis and just-in-time inventory solutions that more precisely meet the needs of healthcare providers, large and small. For more information, please visit www.iremedy.com . About Nutra Pharma Corp. Nutra Pharma Corporation operates as a biotechnology company specializing in the acquisition, licensing, and commercialization of pharmaceutical products and technologies for the management of neurological disorders, cancer, autoimmune, and infectious diseases, including Multiple Sclerosis (MS), Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), Adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN) and Pain. Additionally, the Company markets drug products for sale for the treatment of pain under the brand Nyloxin® and Pet Pain-Away™. For additional information about Nutra Pharma, visit: http://www.NutraPharma.com or http://www.nyloxin.com http://www.petpainaway.com SEC Disclaimer This press release contains forward-looking statements. The words or phrases "would be," "will allow," "intends to," "will likely result," "are expected to," "will continue," "is anticipated," "estimate," "project," or similar expressions are intended to identify "forward-looking statements." Actual results could differ materially from those projected in Nutra Pharma's ("the Company") business plan. The addition of Nyloxin to the iRemedy Marketplace should not be construed as an indication in any way whatsoever of the future value of the Company's common stock or its financial value. The Company's filings may be accessed at the SEC's Edgar system at www.sec.gov. Statements made herein are as of the date of this press release and should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date. The Company cautions readers not to place reliance on such statements. Unless otherwise required by applicable law, we do not undertake, and we specifically disclaim any obligation, to update any forward-looking statements to reflect occurrences, developments, unanticipated events or circumstances after the date of such statement.

News: GlobeNewswire, Press Releases
Site: globenewswire.com

New York, NY, July 23, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zion Market Research has published a new report titled "Machine Learning Market by Service (Professional Services, and Managed Services), for BFSI, Healthcare and Life Science, Retail, Telecommunication, Government and Defense, Manufacturing, Energy and Utilities, Others: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2017-2024''. According to the report, global machine learning market was valued at around USD 1.58 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach approximately USD 20.83 billion in 2024, growing at a CAGR of 44.06% between 2017 and 2024. Machine Learning is an application of artificial intelligence that enables software applications for being more precise in predicting results without being definitively programmed. Many of the artificial intelligence experts have projected their idea that by 2050 all the intellectual tasks performed by the humans can be accomplished by the artificial intelligence technology. Common application to machine learning technology are financial services, healthcare, government, marketing and sales, transportation, oil and gas, manufacturing, bioinformatics, computational anatomy, and more. Some of the open-source and proprietary software for machine learning are LIONsolver, NeuroSolutions, Oracle Data Mining, SAP Leonardo Machine Learning, SequenceL, CNTK, Deeplearning, Mallet, and more. Browse through 29 Tables & 32 Figures spread over 110 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Global Machine Learning Market Size, Share 2017: By Industry Verticals, Growth, Services Analysis and Forecast to 2024". Request Sample Report of Global Machine Learning Market @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/machine-learning-market The introduction of machine learning has transformed many industries which holds the benefits such as autonomous vehicles and interactive machines in production, smart manufacturing, quality control or test automation, predictive maintenance, optimized energy management for climate and energy change, and more. Major companies adopting machine learning for their business agility are Google, IBM, Baidu, Microsoft, Twitter, Qubit, Intel, Apple, Pindrop, and more. Machine learning helps finance industry in customer and client satisfaction, reacting to market trends, and calculating risk; for the healthcare industry in personalized health monitoring; for the retail industry in online recommendations, and tracking price change. There are several real-time examples used by the Facebook, PayPal, Netflix, Uber, Lyst, and many more to provide advanced featured apps. Technological advancements and proliferation in data generation are some of the major factors which are catering to the market growth. Lack of skilled employees is one of the major restraining factors. Additionally, from a future aspect, some factors which uplift the market demand are increasing demand for intelligent business processes and increasing adoption in modern applications. However, sensitive data security and ethical implications of the algorithms deployed are hindering the market growth. Request for PDF Brochure of This Report: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/requestbrochure/machine-learning-market Machine learning market is segmented based on service, verticals, and region. On the basis of the services, the market is bifurcated as professional services and managed services. Furthermore on basis of verticals market is categorized into BFSI, healthcare and life science, retail, telecommunication, government and defense, manufacturing, energy and utilities, and others. Geographically, machine learning market is segmented into North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. North America is predicted to govern the market in forecast period because of developed countries and their major focus on innovative technologies obtained from R&D sector. Asia-Pacific region is predicted to grow at the highest CAGR in forecast period due to increasing awareness regarding business productivity. In Asia region vendors are offering competent machine learning proficiency due to which it is the highest potential region for the market. Browse the full "Machine Learning Market by Service (Professional Services, and Managed Services), for BFSI, Healthcare, and Life Science, Retail, Telecommunication, Government and Defense, Manufacturing, Energy and Utilities, Others: Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2017-2024" report at https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/machine-learning-market Machine learning has achieved high market rate in North American trailed by Europe and will maintain the same in forecast years. Because of presence of prominent players and higher rate of machine learning adoption in different sectors machine learning has achieved market value in North America in a very less time. This new promising trend has driven the market growth in Europe. Asia Pacific region has heavy impact of rising industrial rate with growing awareness of machine learning among different verticals. Asia Pacific region is estimated to have the prevalent potential for market growth in forecast period because of growing awareness for business productivity. Middle East is expected to acquire 2% of the total global market of machine learning in forecast period. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar are the major regions in Middle East having high impact of machine learning technology in their business sector. Inquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/machine-learning-market Microsoft Corporation, International Business Machines Corporation, Sas Institute Inc., SAP SE, Bigml Inc., Google Inc., Intel Corporation, Fair Isaac Corporation, Baidu Inc., Amazon Web Services Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development Lp, H2o.ai are some of the major players of the machine learning market. Request customized copy of report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/custom/3171 The report segments the global machine learning market as follows: Global Machine Learning Market: Services segment Analysis Professional Services Managed Services Global Machine Learning Market: Vertical Segment Analysis BFSI Healthcare and Life Science Retail Telecommunication Government and Defense Manufacturing Energy and Utilities Others Global Machine Learning Market: Regional Segment Analysis North America The U.S. Europe UK France Germany Asia Pacific China Japan India Latin America Brazil The Middle East and Africa About Us: Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the client's needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to us—after all—if you do well, a little of the light shines on us. Follow Us LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/zion-market-research Follow Us Twitter: https://twitter.com/zion_research Visit Blog: https://www.webseriesreviews.com Contact Us: Joel John 244 Fifth Avenue, Suite N202 New York, 10001, United States Tel: +49-322 210 92714 USA/Canada Toll-Free No.1-855-465-4651 Email: sales@zionmarketresearch.com Website: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com

News: PR Newswire
Site: www.prnewswire.co.uk

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Feb. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PressReader, the world's largest all-you-can-read newspaper and magazine platform, today announced a new licensing deal with Dow Jones and its flagship Wall Street Journal brand. Under the terms of the deal, The Wall Street Journal's US digital replica daily edition will be made available to PressReader subscribers outside of the U.S. via PressReader.com and PressReader's award-winning iOS and Android app. "We see this partnership as an opportunity to increase the reach of our U.S. digital replica edition globally, and to share our high-quality journalism with more people around the world," said Jonathan Wright, Global Managing Director, Dow Jones. "There has never been a more important time for people to access professional journalism. The Wall Street Journal is consistently cited as the most trusted newspaper in America. We see this deal as an important part of our efforts to continue to grow our brand and audiences globally." Through the PressReader agreement, The Wall Street Journal will be positioned to further expand its global reach and attract new members to its WSJ.com platform by driving subscriptions through PressReader's established international network of brand partners. The network includes global hotel brands, international airlines, cruise ship customers and healthcare businesses. This includes millions of hotel guests, airline, cruise and ferry passengers, healthcare patients, and offshore crews who frequent Marriott hotels, AccorHotels, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, Air Canada, Le Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg, Seabourn, and Uniworld cruise lines, to name just a few. Commenting on the partnership, Alex Kroogman, the CEO of PressReader Group of Companies, noted: "PressReader has over the past 20 years, built a solid network of content, customers, and commercial partners which continues to deliver outstanding value to our publishing partners. This new partnership with The Wall Street Journal is a testament to the unique value we deliver. The Wall Street Journal is a highly respected and trusted name in journalism and is well regarded for its unparalleled analysis and unique reporting." Recognized for its outstanding and accurate journalism with 38 Pulitzer prizes to its credit, The Wall Street Journal digital replica will bring tangible value to PressReader's discerning subscribers who appreciate the importance of premium news content. The Wall Street Journal joins PressReader's prestigious collection of the world's best newspapers and magazines, which includes The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, Newsweek, The Guardian, Forbes, Hearst Magazines, The Australian, Le Figaro, and El País . As consumers continue to show a keen affinity for quality aggregated content, as evidenced by the success of Netflix and Spotify, PressReader looks to continue to attract premium content to its platform to fulfill readers' desires for trusted journalism on whatever platform they choose. Notes to Editors About Dow Jones Dow Jones is a global provider of news and business information, delivering content to consumers and organizations around the world across multiple formats, including print, digital, mobile and live events. Dow Jones has produced unrivaled quality content for more than 130 years and today has one of the world's largest newsgathering operations globally. It produces leading publications and products including the flagship Wall Street Journal, America's largest newspaper by paid circulation; Factiva, Barron's, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, Financial News, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and Dow Jones Newswires. Dow Jones is a division of News Corp (Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). About PressReader PressReader is on a mission to improve the way people discover stories that matter to them. With offices in Vancouver, Dublin, and Manila, the company provides the largest all-you-can-read platform of newspapers and magazines where people can discover relevant and trusted content from anywhere in the world. Using their phone, tablet, or computer, readers can browse content online or download entire issues using the PressReader app . They can subscribe for unlimited access, or get the full experience sponsored by any one of thousands of PressReader's brand partners − businesses that leverage the premium content platform to enhance their customers' experience − household names like British Airways, Turkish Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Air Canada, Marriott, Fairmont Hotels, Seabourn Cruise Lines, Princeton University, and the New York Public Library. PressReader's digital edition technology ( Branded Editions ) also powers many of the world's most prestigious brands, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and News Corp's The Times (of London). For more info, visit about.pressreader.com; Media Inquiries: Mike Twining, Director, Business Marketing, mike@pressreader.com, +1-604-278-4604. SOURCE PressReader Inc. Related Links https://www.pressreader.com

News: PR Newswire
Site: www.prnewswire.co.uk

New initiative will see The Wall Street Journal's U.S. digital replica made available for the first time via PressReader VANCOUVER, Feb. 19, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - PressReader, the world's largest all-you-can-read newspaper and magazine platform, today announced a new licensing deal with Dow Jones and its flagship Wall Street Journal brand. Under the terms of the deal, The Wall Street Journal's US digital replica daily edition will be made available to PressReader subscribers outside of the U.S. via PressReader.com and PressReader's award-winning iOS and Android app. "We see this partnership as an opportunity to increase the reach of our U.S. digital replica edition globally, and to share our high-quality journalism with more people around the world," said Jonathan Wright, Global Managing Director, Dow Jones. "There has never been a more important time for people to access professional journalism. The Wall Street Journal is consistently cited as the most trusted newspaper in America. We see this deal as an important part of our efforts to continue to grow our brand and audiences globally." Through the PressReader agreement, The Wall Street Journal will be positioned to further expand its global reach and attract new members to its WSJ.com platform by driving subscriptions through PressReader's established international network of brand partners. The network includes global hotel brands, international airlines, cruise ship customers and healthcare businesses. This includes millions of hotel guests, airline, cruise and ferry passengers, healthcare patients, and offshore crews who frequent Marriott hotels, AccorHotels, Cathay Pacific, British Airways, Air Canada, Le Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg, Seabourn, and Uniworld cruise lines, to name just a few. Commenting on the partnership, Alex Kroogman, the CEO of PressReader Group of Companies, noted: "PressReader has over the past 20 years, built a solid network of content, customers, and commercial partners which continues to deliver outstanding value to our publishing partners. This new partnership with The Wall Street Journal is a testament to the unique value we deliver. The Wall Street Journal is a highly respected and trusted name in journalism and is well regarded for its unparalleled analysis and unique reporting." Recognized for its outstanding and accurate journalism with 38 Pulitzer prizes to its credit, The Wall Street Journal digital replica will bring tangible value to PressReader's discerning subscribers who appreciate the importance of premium news content. The Wall Street Journal joins PressReader's prestigious collection of the world's best newspapers and magazines, which includes The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, Newsweek, The Guardian, Forbes, Hearst Magazines, The Australian, Le Figaro, and El País . As consumers continue to show a keen affinity for quality aggregated content, as evidenced by the success of Netflix and Spotify, PressReader looks to continue to attract premium content to its platform to fulfill readers' desires for trusted journalism on whatever platform they choose. Notes to Editors About Dow Jones Dow Jones is a global provider of news and business information, delivering content to consumers and organizations around the world across multiple formats, including print, digital, mobile and live events. Dow Jones has produced unrivaled quality content for more than 130 years and today has one of the world's largest newsgathering operations globally. It produces leading publications and products including the flagship Wall Street Journal, America's largest newspaper by paid circulation; Factiva, Barron's, MarketWatch, Mansion Global, Financial News, Dow Jones Risk & Compliance and Dow Jones Newswires. Dow Jones is a division of News Corp (Nasdaq: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV). About PressReader PressReader is on a mission to improve the way people discover stories that matter to them. With offices in Vancouver, Dublin, and Manila, the company provides the largest all-you-can-read platform of newspapers and magazines where people can discover relevant and trusted content from anywhere in the world. Using their phone, tablet, or computer, readers can browse content online or download entire issues using the PressReader app. They can subscribe for unlimited access, or get the full experience sponsored by any one of thousands of PressReader's brand partners − businesses that leverage the premium content platform to enhance their customers' experience − household names like British Airways, Turkish Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Air Canada, Marriott, Fairmont Hotels, Seabourn Cruise Lines, Princeton University, and the New York Public Library. PressReader's digital edition technology ( Branded Editions ) also powers many of the world's most prestigious brands, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and News Corp's The Times (of London). SOURCE PressReader Inc. Related Links http://www.pressreader.com/

News: GlobeNewswire, Market Research Reports
Site: globenewswire.com

DUBLIN, Ireland, April 06, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- COVID-19 will change the future of your organization. In just a few weeks, the pandemic has transformed the global economy and its effects have been felt by every industry. While many industries have been badly damaged by COVID-19, others are experiencing unexpected growth. As the world's largest online market research store, we have identified thirty areas seeing growth and investment opportunities: 1 Personal Protective Equipment The World Health Organisation estimates that 89 million medical masks will be required every month during this crisis, yet many countries are facing a severe shortage. They estimate a 40% increase in manufacturing to meet this new demand. Gloves, hazmat suits and other health protective gear will also be urgently needed. 2 Remote Learning To avoid the human crowds that can spread disease, schools at all levels – for children and adults alike – are switching to an online model. This threatens to collapse the increasingly expensive model of traditional colleges and leave the market wide open for video streaming, educational software, home-schooling, game-based learning and other remote-learning innovations. 3 Telehealth During a crisis that threatens to overwhelm the healthcare system, more consumers will turn to any electronic and online means to monitor their health and seek treatment, including telemonitoring, health apps, and various healthcare software and web services. Online health consultant companies like Dialogue report a surge in customer interest in the last two weeks, causing them to almost double their number of employees, and medical app InkBlot has seen a 200% increase in demand. 4 Thermal Scanners Temperature scanning technology is vital in hospitals, to monitor a pandemic characterised by fever, but also in airport security at a time when borders are being monitored. Companies like Ramco are combining thermal sensors with facial recognition as a contactless alternative to less sanitary forms of personal identification. 5 Vaccines Dozens of companies around the world launched into a global race to find a COVID-19 vaccine, and pharmaceutical companies will need immediate information in virology, antivirals, virus removal and inactivation, drug delivery and testing, and licensing. Medical professionals will require information on respiratory diseases and infection, and officials at all levels will need the best inside information the moment it becomes available. 6 Ventilators COVID-19's main symptoms are respiratory, so ventilators, spirometers, oxygen concentrators, and other breathing devices are seeing a sudden demand. Ventilator manufacturers like Airon, which ordinarily sell 50 a month, are getting orders for thousands and aren't able to fulfil them all. 7 Videoconferencing Companies scrambled to meet the sudden demand for telecommuting options during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, creating an immediate and widespread need for video conferencing, certification services, mobile network equipment, terminals and software, as well as VPNs and other security measures. The video-conferencing company Zoom saw its shares double since the start of the outbreak in December, making it now worth more than Uber and Lyft combined. 8 Video On Demand Perhaps the most obvious beneficiary of the current situation has been home entertainment companies like Netflix and other streaming services, to the point that Youtube and Netflix have reduced image quality to help internet providers cope with the surging demand for bandwidth. Online subscription companies, video-on-demand, livestreams and other such services will continue to flourish in the months ahead. 9 Virtual Reality With a new interest in home entertainment of all kinds, this is an opportunity for creators of virtual and augmented reality systems to promote their products. 10 Workplace Chat Workplace chat solutions like Slack, Troop Messenger and Brosix offer a fast and convenient way to communicate with colleagues. As an increased number of companies switch to remote working to limit the risk of infection, they are relying more and more on workplace chat to facilitate communication and collaboration between team members. Above are ten areas seeing an unexpected rise in demand. To see the full list, please go to: 30 industries seeing a surge in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic About ResearchAndMarkets.com ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends. Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

News: GlobeNewswire, Technical Analysis
Site: globenewswire.com

New York, NY, Feb. 13, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zion Market Research has published a new report titled "Subscription and Billing Management Market by Component (Software and Services), by Deployment (On-Premises and Cloud), by Enterprise (Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Large Enterprises), and by End-User Industry (Retail, BFSI, IT & Telecom, Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, and Others): Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2018–2025''. According to the report, the global subscription and billing management market was valued at USD 3.8 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach USD 10.5 billion by 2025, at a rate of 15.5% between 2019 and 2025. The increasing adoption of subscription and billing management solutions in the retail sector is likely to fuel the subscription and billing management market growth in the future. Various retailers are focusing on using these solutions to automate their billing processes and retain customers. Top market players are offering tailored solutions to retailers that help them in increasing revenue, both in-store and online. The demand for these solutions is on the rise due to the massive e-commerce sales. In 2017, the worldwide e-commerce sales were USD 2.30 trillion as compared to USD 1.84 trillion in 2016. With increasing online retailing, the need for solutions to automate bills is also rising. These aforementioned factors are expected to drive the growth of the global subscription and billing management market over the estimated timeframe. Browse through 111 Tables & 30 Figures spread over 168 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Global Subscription and Billing Management Market, 2018: Industry Size, Share, Trends, Growth, Analysis Share and Forecast 2025". Request Free Sample Report of Global Subscription And Billing Management Market Report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/sample/subscription-billing-management-market The subscription and billing management solutions enable banks and financial institutes to improve operations, deliver enhanced price execution, and meet their revenue goals. Rising investments made in technology by numerous banks are driving the market for subscription and billing management. JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Morgan Stanley, etc. are spending on technology to automate numerous processes. In 2018, these banks announced their tech budget, i.e., USD 10.8 billion, USD 16 billion, and USD 8 billion, respectively. The global subscription and billing management market is segmented on the basis of the component, deployment, enterprise, and end-user industry. By deployment, the global subscription and billing management market is bifurcated into on-premises and cloud. Software and services comprise the component segment of the global subscription and billing management market. Small & medium enterprises (SMEs) and large enterprises form the enterprise segment of the subscription and billing management market. The end-user industry segment includes retail, BFSI, IT and telecom, healthcare, media and entertainment, and others. The media and entertainment sector is likely to grow significantly over the forecast timespan, owing to the escalating demand for online streaming of movies and web series. Download Free Report PDF Brochure: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/requestbrochure/subscription-billing-management-market North America is projected to hold an important share of the global subscription and billing management market over the estimated time span. The U.S. is estimated to make major contributions to this regional market. Various retailers in the country are opting to use online platforms to increase their sales. The U.S. retail e-commerce sales in 2018 were valued at USD 504.6 billion as compared to USD 446.8 billion in 2017. Customers are shifting to online shopping, which has made retailers opt for solutions that would help them to automate bills and manage customer disputes. Furthermore, the presence of top market players, such as Netsuite, Inc., Oracle Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation, in the region is likely to further propel the region's subscription and billing management market over the forecast timeframe. The Asia Pacific subscription and billing management market is expected to grow considerably in the future. China and India are anticipated to make major contributions toward this regional market growth, owing to the adoption of new technology in the healthcare industry. The hospital industry in India is projected to reach about USD 132.8 billion by 2022. In 2017, the total number of doctors in India was about 840,000. Healthcare institutes are focusing on investing in technology to streamline their processes. Furthermore, it is expected that IT investments in China's hospital systems will reach USD 9.76 billion by 2022. Browse the full "Subscription and Billing Management Market by Component (Software and Services), by Deployment (On-Premises and Cloud), by Enterprise (Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and Large Enterprises), and by End-User Industry (Retail, BFSI, IT & Telecom, Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, and Others): Global Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecast, 2018–2025" Report at https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/subscription-billing-management-market The European BFSI sector is regarded as the most attractive industry for the subscription and billing management market. The UK is one of the major countries that the major market players are targeting. Various banks and financial institutes in the region are focusing on spending on technology to simplify the services offered to their customers. In 2018, "Nationwide Building Society", one of UK's top financial institutes announced to invest about USD 5.41 billion on technology in the next five years. Furthermore, German Fintech companies witnessed investments worth USD 1.1 billion in 2018. These investments are projected to rise as customers are using mobile banking for transactions, applying for insurance, etc. The Latin American region is likely to make notable contributions toward the global subscription and billing management market in the future owing to the rising demand for online movies and music streaming in Brazil and Argentina. Netflix and Amazon Prime are focusing on creating series in regional languages to expand their business in this region, which is likely to further fuel this regional market growth over the estimated time period. Inquire more about this report before purchase @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/inquiry/subscription-billing-management-market Some key players of the global subscription and billing management market are Netsuite, Inc., Computer Sciences Corporation, Fastspring, Cerillion PLC, Aria Systems, Inc., Cleverbridge AG, Avangate B.V., Zuora, Inc., Oracle Corporation, and SAP SE among others. Request customized copy of report @ https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/custom/628 The report segments the global subscription and billing management market into: Global Subscription and Billing Management Market: Deployment Analysis On-Premises Cloud Global Subscription and Billing Management Market: Component Analysis Software Billing Mediation Subscription Order Management Financial customer Care and Dispute Management Pricing and Quote Management Others Services Managed Professional Global Subscription and Billing Management Market: Enterprise Analysis Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Large Enterprises Global Subscription and Billing Management Market: End-User Industry Analysis Retail BFSI IT and Telecom Healthcare Media and Entertainment Others Global Subscription and Billing Management Market: Regional Analysis North America The U.S. Europe UK France Germany Asia Pacific China Japan India Latin America Brazil The Middle East and Africa Related Reports: Mobile Cloud Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/mobile-cloud-market Fraud Detection and Prevention Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/fraud-detection-prevention-market Smart Office Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/smart-office-market Enterprise 2.0 Technologies Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/enterprise-technologies-market Digital Asset Management Market: https://www.zionmarketresearch.com/report/digital-asset-management-market About Us: Zion Market Research is an obligated company. We create futuristic, cutting edge, informative reports ranging from industry reports, company reports to country reports. We provide our clients not only with market statistics unveiled by avowed private publishers and public organizations but also with vogue and newest industry reports along with pre-eminent and niche company profiles. Our database of market research reports comprises a wide variety of reports from cardinal industries. Our database is been updated constantly in order to fulfill our clients with prompt and direct online access to our database. Keeping in mind the client's needs, we have included expert insights on global industries, products, and market trends in this database. Last but not the least, we make it our duty to ensure the success of clients connected to us—after all—if you do well, a little of the light shines on us. 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News: Latest Results for Environmental Science and Pollution Research
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The corona virus pandemic of 2019 (COVID-19) has taken over the entire world and is currently an issue of international importance (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). The pandemic began with an outbreak in Wuhan (China), with first case identified in December 2019, soon spreading to all the corners of the world (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). The WHO declared a COVID-19 outbreak as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), on January 30, 2020 (WHO 2020). The current data reveals 3,820,869 infected patients all over the world and a death toll arising each day at alarming rates with hundreds and thousands of death cases significantly reported (https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/). Countries like USA, Spain, Italy, etc. are the most affected nations with viral transmission taking place at a rapid rate, via human to human transmission by droplets or direct contact, and the incubation period of 14 days (Lai et al. 2020). This current crisis is exerting tremendous amount of pressure on healthcare authorities to develop effective diagnostic, treatment, and prevention approaches. The hospitals, healthcare facilities, and research centers are already putting in a lot of efforts to contain the infection and prevent the spread of the disease; however, every preventive measure taken by the government is associated with a number of challenges and problems on the way. The lockdown decision is collectively adopted by the world today but is exerting an economic imbalance in the whole world, and many developing nations are unable to carry it forward. Also, despite the effectiveness of diagnostic procedures adopted by the healthcare facilities, these methods are time-consuming and also less supply of medical equipment is creating difficulties in management of the pandemic. Moreover, the social balance is disrupted with people not being able to work and students experiencing great loss of academics, as a result of lockdown. All these problems point towards the development of effective alternative techno-driven approaches, which could significantly aid in carrying out all the necessary activities without virus transmission and also help the health professionals in diagnosis, treatment, and analysis of COVID-19 patients. Figure 3 layouts the general procedure of AI and non-AI based applications, aiding the healthcare professionals to identify COVID-19 symptoms in infected patients. Fig. 3 General procedures of AI and non-AI based approaches to identify COVID-19 symptoms Full size image Increasing demand of emergency care facilities has broken down the best healthcare models worldwide (Xiaoxia 2020). Therefore, the global healthcare firms should focus on technological approaches and the world needs to promote development of healthy nations and not powerful nations. The healthcare today should significantly invest in preventive medicine, community health, and disaster management (Vaishya et al. 2020b). Most of the authorities were unable to judge the magnitude and intensity of this pandemic, as they failed to utilize the latest technologies in this regard. The need of artificial intelligence approaches is necessary to win this battle against the COVID-19 pandemic via effective roles in infection tracking, vaccine development, population screening, quarantine development, effective utilization of resources, and designing targeted responses (Vaishya et al. 2020a). Telecommunication departments are boosting their infrastructure and focusing on offering 5G functionality (Vaishya et al. 2020b). Mobile based apps are consistently providing information about regular infected, recovered, and death cases each day and connecting users to medical professionals through online portals (Vaishya et al. 2020b). Computational technologies are working synergistically with molecular biology techniques to accelerate the vaccine development processes (Vaishya et al. 2020b). New generation technologies have been exerting a significant impact on COVID-19 management with industry 4.0 technologies, newly developed smartphone apps and tracking devices, internet of things, cloud computing, big data, 5G, blockchain, and many more, which are contributing to the global efforts in prevention, control, monitoring, tracking, vaccine development, treatment, and resource allocation of COVID-19 pandemic (Vaishya et al. 2020a). These technologies, similar to artificial intelligence, are a part of computer technology, however, function as physical devices based on the internet, while AI accounts for the concept of using such technologies to drive the output generated by human actions, therefore collectively constituting cyber-physical systems (CPSs) (Ghosh et al. 2018). Artificial intelligence, along with technology-driven approaches, like robotics, internet of things, telehealth, cloud computing, industry 4.0 technologies, convolutional neural networks, etc. are all modern era methods, which work hand in hand to reduce the workload, time consumption, and human efforts, as well as provide efficient and reliable results, not only in healthcare but all the other areas, influencing the life of human race. These approaches cannot work independently, but work conjointly, in order to achieve maximum outcome. Table 2 describes the technological approaches utilized in COVID-19 pandemic. Table 2 Role of various techno-driven approaches in COVID-19 pandemic Full size table Artificial intelligence is associated with significant applications in the COVID-19 pandemic, comprising of early identification and screening of the infection by facilitating economical and rapid recognition of symptoms, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) (Vaishya et al. 2020a). Treatment monitoring is another application of AI in COVID-19 pandemic, which facilitates automatic prediction of virus spread, infected individuals, and keeping the people updated about the pandemic situation, along with contact tracing of the individuals, by identifying "hot spots" to trace the infection and predict the future course and chances of remission (Vaishya et al. 2020a). In addition, AI can identify the areas, individuals, and conditions most susceptible to the infection, as well as can keep a constant track of mortality rates and infection spread. Furthermore, most importantly, AI aids in development of vaccines and drugs by accelerating the drug development techniques, diagnosis processes, and clinical trial management in the pandemic (Vaishya et al. 2020a). Industry 4.0 technologies Numerous advancements in technology and employment of technological measures, like artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, robotics, nanotechnology, etc. are all components of industrial 4.0 technology, which constitute the beginning of this revolution (Görmüş 2019). Artificial intelligence and industry 4.0 technology accelerate each other, resulting in propagation and empowerment of technological advancement in favor of mankind. Industry 4.0 technologies are technological approaches of 4th industrial revolution, which comprise of advanced technological processes to enhance atomization and implement time saving processes, for the benefits of the human race (Javaid et al. 2020). The industry 4.0 technologies are connected to a monitoring system via sensors (Javaid et al. 2020). The industry 4.0 machines utilize smart techno processes for manufacturing, which are supported by wireless connectivity (Javaid et al. 2020). The industry 4.0 machines manufacture necessary disposable items to overcome their shortage during COVID-19 pandemic, by supplying disposal medical items and equipments to the health care institutions to facilitate smooth conduct of treatment to the patients (Zeng et al. 2020; Manogaran et al. 2017). This technology offers a flexible production line and comprises of numerous digital technologies, like A1 and internet of things, to promote production and designing of medical instruments via designing software and manufacturing technologies, like 3D printing, etc. (Ruan et al. 2020; Haleem et al. 2019). This technology offers a number of digital solutions to accelerate the events during the pandemic (Cheng et al. 2016; Grasselli et al. 2020; Ahmed et al. 2020) and exhibits essential benefits like planning activities related to COVID-19, manufacturing of significant items required during the virtual reality employment for training, limited risks imposed to the health employees, maintains the medical part of the supply chain, robotics technology to fulfill limited number of doctors, promoting a flexible treatment environment, providing necessary aid to the researchers and helps in better assessment of possible risks as well as global public health emergency of this virus (Haleem and Javaid 2019; .Ren et al. 2020). The industry 4.0 technologies encompass a no. of technological approaches, to provide essential help and support during the pandemic (Javaid et al. 2020). It utilizes AI in population screening, risk assessment, and employing AI components (ML & natural language processing) to develop big-data based computational models for prediction and recognition of the outbreak (Javaid et al. 2020). It also helps in reducing the viral transmission and eliminating the misguiding and wrong viral related information on social platforms (Baldwin and Tomiura 2020; Haleem et al. 2020; Gupta and Misra 2020; Gupta et al. 2020). Moreover, AI-based video surveillance minimizes the workload of health care employees, especially during the pandemic, and helps in better understanding of the effect of virus on the population (Moeslund and Granum 2001; Wand et al. 2009; Sampol 2020; Kim et al. 2018; Pejcic et al. 2006; Ren et al. 2020). Furthermore analytical approaches like big data track the spread pattern of the virus, storing large amount of related data, providing rapid re-evaluation of the decisions, which results in identification of effective therapies against the COVID-19 disease (Javaid et al. 2020). Therefore, this technique analyzes and forecasts the real time data from global sources to update the researchers, doctors, and epidemiologists with needful information and data. This set of technologies also employ virtual reality programs to enable video calling (to provide public connectivity and enable the people to continue their work) reducing travel costs, minimizing absenteeism as well as limits the environmental impact (Javaid et al. 2020). During the current global pandemic of COVID-19, virtual reality has been an outstanding tool enabling communication and comfort especially at this time. Cloud computing is another digital platform enabling people to maintain their professional and social lives via slack, loom, Netflix, Amazon, Google cloud, etc., even in the current times of social distancing (Javaid et al. 2020). One of the most unique AI programs, autonomous robots have offered a remarkable contribution at not only medical and healthcare platform but also in many other areas, as a revolutionary technology. In this COVID-19 pandemic, development of autonomic police robots to ensure social distancing can prove to be quite appreciable, with a greater degree of detection and accuracy by the machines, this technology can provide medical assistance to healthcare workers, overcoming the limited number of medical professional and saving a lot of time (Javaid et al. 2020). Furthermore, 3D scanning technologies can be used as a useful tool for analyzing the thoracic cavity of the patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 and detect the degree of severity in the individual (Javaid et al. 2020). Similarly, limited supply of face masks can be overcome by 3D printing technology (Javaid et al. 2020). It has been claimed that recently developed Nanohack; 3D-printed mask is reliable, reusable, and quite efficient against COVID-19 infection (Javaid et al. 2020). Biosensors are another significant components of industry 4.0 technology, which converts a bio signal into an electrical signal, that can be measured and provide devices which are cost effective, sensitive, and easy to operate, providing high accuracy in the present COVID-19 infection (Javaid et al. 2020). Furthermore, a single-use wireless biosensor patch is being developed, which is considered to facilitate early detection and monitoring of COVID-19 symptoms as well as real time recording of essential variables like ECG trace, temperature, respiration rate, etc. (Javaid et al. 2020). Moreover, these technologies provide telemedicine services, enabling detection and monitoring of physiological data and reporting the information to the health workers (Javaid et al. 2020). This digital platform enables remote and online learning as well as distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. Internet of things Internet of things (IoT) is an automated approach that deals with collection, transfer, analysis, and storage of data, via biosensors and cell phone applications (Javaid et al. 2020). IoT is also useful in keeping a proper track of patient zero and infection chain as well as recognizing and tracking people who disobey the social distancing regulations (Javaid et al. 2020). This also supports the healthcare workers by in-home monitoring of the patients. IoT based service platform was observed to solve the issues related to drug delivery (Fig. 4), according to a Chinese study, which showed that the platform formulated hospital information system (HIS) based orders which are sent to suppliers to deliver medicines within a specific time (Ying et al. 2020). This approach of IoT curbed the infection spread via purchase of drugs and also preserved resources and labor costs (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). The IoT comprises of drone technology, which is currently used for surveillance to ensure social distancing. The drones are automatic or remote controlled propelling vehicles based upon aerodynamic forces, which assist in transportation of goods, network of communication, and surveillance processes (Table 3) (Rosser et al. 2018). Fig. 4 Workflow pattern of IoT based drug delivery paradigm Full size image Table 3 Potential applications of drone technology Full size table In global pandemics like COVID-19, social disturbing is a significant aspect to prevent infection transmission and spread, thus, drones enable proper surveillance ensuring that the people follow the social distancing regulations, and also aid the police officials and ensure them to focus on more relevant services (Vacca and Onishi 2017; Mishra et al. 2020). Information communication, public dissemination of information, and social support in COVID-19 pandemic During a pandemic, the public demands transparency related to the information, government initiatives, policies, quarantine periods, travel bans, and other updates. The information must be regularly updated and consistently verified by the authorities concerned along with risk assessment depending upon the dose of information. A simple model of government–expert–public–healthcare system has been presented for effective risk perception, which encompasses government–public, government–experts, experts–healthcare, and experts–public, as four critical mediums to control the decisive actions, that have significant impact on the public (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). The government–public communication is an external form of communication, comprising of delivery of accurate and complete data to the public, whereas, the government–expert communication is an internal form of interaction required for risk assessment and decision-making policies (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Expert–healthcare communication is also an internal form of communication, which is marked as a source for risk analysis and identifies the intensity of a problem, whereas, expert–public communication is an external interaction to bridge the gap between the public and the experts, where the public fails to understand the complexity of the situation (Gesser-Edelsburg et al. 2015). Furthermore, one of the important lessons learnt from infected nations like Italy and China is that risk assessment is a very important parameter that should be considered and evaluated from the very beginning (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Dissemination of information to the general public is enabled by development of free interactive chat services, to promote regular release of updates related to the COVID-19 pandemic, also facilitating the users to ask questions related to the COVID-19 and stay connected with healthcare professionals (Kapoor et al.). AskNii, an online portal that was launched in India in the mid 2019, is an artificial intelligence based communication platform, that is currently being widened to incorporate necessary information related to the COVI-19 pandemic on its twitter handle (10.1016/j.ihj.2020.04.001https://twitter.com/asknivi?). "Natural cycles," a US based birth control app has also expanded to develop a symptom tracker with built-in functionality, to aid the COVID-19 crisis (Kapoor et al.). Numerous mobile based apps like Safiri Smart, CommCare, and Praekelt.org have been showcased in Global Digital Health Network convention, on 12th March 2020, in its first virtual COVID-19 session, to portray the role of such tech-based solutions in management of COVID-19 pandemic (https://www.jsi.com/covid-19-digital-health-solutions-to-improve-theresponse/). Many countries have started sharing useful information related to the pandemic on specific apps and websites like "Corona Map" in South Korea (https://coronamap.site/). Moreover, the Indian government has formulated a mobile app, "Aarogya Setu," to enable communication between healthcare organizations and public as well as releasing useful information regarding the pandemic (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id¼nic.goi.aarogyasetu). The COVID-19 pandemic exerts an undue burden on the society, as the people are panicking and are distant from their professional lives, thus desiring support and assistance during this difficult time. The viral transmission is a critical factor of this crisis and disease spreading would be maximum if the people would allow normal routines. Therefore, quarantine and social distancing parameters are significant approaches, which have been adopted by the whole world to manage the infection progression (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Work from home facilities enable the smooth conduct of isolation processes and are successfully carried out by video conferences and online portals like, zoom, webinar, etc. Various E-learning programs have been introduced in numerous countries like India, USA, South Korea, UK, etc., where the educational institutions have been closed to cease the infection spread (EdTechReview 2020). E-learning is a web-based technology that is created for distance learning such as Coursera, Google Classroom, and Udacity (Zoroja et al. 2014; Babu and Reddy 2015). Online competitions are also conducted in countries like India, to encourage young minds to develop innovative ideas and better solutions (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Surveillance programs have also been introduced to track the infected individuals to hinder the spread of the infection. A mobile application called Trace Together was launched in Singapore, which employed phone Bluetooth facility to detect COVID-19 infected individuals (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). In Hong Kong, a wristband synced with mobile app alerted the authorities if the individuals leave the paces of quarantine (CNBC 2020). Supply chain and tele-health facility Consistency in the availability of essential medical equipment is a challenging parameter in current global crisis. Dyson Ltd. (Tech company in UK), in collaboration with the Technology Partnership (TTP), has developed a brand new ventilator called Covent, as per the clinical standard (Techcrunch 2020). Moreover, medical tools are being developed using 3D printing technology, like Isinnova (3D printing company in Italy) which developed a valve, using a 3D printer which connected the hospital respirator to the mask (World Economic Forum 2021). AI technology has been employed in the hospital for collecting the patient data, as the number of patients is increasing day by day, during the current global crisis (Jordona et al. 2019). The American College of Physicians and American College of Cardiology issued a collaboration statement, on 2nd March 2020, stimulating the authorities to understand the importance of telehealth services and digital health care in management of COVID-19 pandemic (Kapoor et al.). Many virtual chatbots and webbots have been created to enable healthcare workers (HCWs) to communicate with the patients virtually instead of risking exposure to infection (Kapoor et al.). Robotic telemedicine approaches like Vici (by Intouch Health) are incorporated with medical tools, cameras, and communication screens and can be sent into isolation wards of the patients to limit infection spread (Kapoor et al.). Various countries like China have employed robots for delivery of necessary items and sanitizing the hospitals (The Economic Times 2020). Electronic intensive care units (e-ICUs) are a unique approach enabling monitoring of 60–100 patients simultaneously by HCWs across different hospitals, as in USA where 300 hospitals in 34 states are taking advantage of this technology (Kapoor et al.). Convolutional neural networks The medical imaging, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and computational tomography are significant parameters of diagnosis of COVID-19 disease in patients (Ardakani et al. 2020). The chest CT scan findings reveal presence of ground glass opacities and multifocal patches in patients with COVID-19 infection. Lodwick, in 1966, introduced the concept of computer aided diagnosis (CAD) (Lodwick 1965), which are currently employed in clinical practices. The reproducibility and sensitivity of CAD programs grant it superiority over radiologists (Castellano et al. 2004), who utilize CAD assistance in detection of lung problems in the present times. CAD is utilized in various technical frameworks designed for COVID-19 diagnosis as the role of convolutional neural networks (CNN), in detecting lung nodules as depicted by Gu et al. (2018). This concept was elaborated in a study, utilizing CAD based deep learning system to differentiate between COVID-19 infection and other viral diseases, via 10 well known CNNs, Alex-Net, VGG-16, GoogleNet, MobileNet-V2, SqueezeNet, ResNet-101, ResNet-18, Xception, ResNet-50, and VGG-19 (Fig. 5). All these CNNs were employed to distinguish the infection in COVID-19 group from non-COVID-19 group (Ardakani et al. 2020) (Table 4). Fig. 5 Representation of 10 convolutional neural networks, used to distinguish infection in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 groups Full size image Table 4 Brief overview of convolutional neural networks used in distinguishing COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 groups Full size table A study was conducted on COVID-19 positive 108 patients comprising 48 females and 60 males with an average age of 50.22 ± 10.8 (Ardakani et al. 2020). The control group comprised of 86 patients with atypical pneumonia including 35 females and 51 males, with an average age of 61.45 ± 15.04 (Ardakani et al. 2020). No marked variation was observed in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 groups on the basis of sex distribution, but the average age in case of non-COVID-19 group was higher than COVID-19 group (Ardakani et al. 2020). Five hundred ten image patches, each from COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 groups, were extracted (total of 1020 image patches), and the data was divided into 102 (with 50%-50% distribution) and 816 (with 50%-50% distribution) for validation processes (Ardakani et al. 2020). The CNNs were able to differentiate between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 groups with best results achieved by Xception and ResNet-101 networks (Ardakani et al. 2020). The ResNet network-101 exhibited greater sensitivity in COVID-19 diagnosis, but lower specificity than Xception network. Therefore, ResNet-101 has a superiority over other CNN networks on account of its high sensitivity and AUC, elaborating residual learning, which are easily optimized and accuracy is improved with increasing depths (He et al. 2016). This model does not impose hefty costs and therefore, can be employed as an additional method during CT imaging in radiology departments (Ardakani et al. 2020). AI in prediction, prevention, classification, diagnosis, tracking, and treatment of COVID-19 patients AI and ML algorithms are intensively employed in classification and forecasting of data such as Blue dot start up based on AI, which analyzes vast no. of articles (>100,000) online worldwide in 65 different languages for every 15 min (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). The algorithm identified accelerated increase in pneumonia cases in Wuhan, releasing warning, long before it was officially identified as the COVID-19 (Diginomica 2020). Analyses of health reports and tracing of infection hubs are carried out by AI based companies like Metabiota and Blue dot, which utilize NLP programs (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). In order to facilitate clear understanding of an infection and analyze its severity from mild to critical condition, data prediction and classification is an important parameter to follow (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Jiang et al. utilized AI algorithms to investigate COVID-19 outbreak and patients critically infected, based upon the data collected from two hospitals in Wenzhou, Zhejiang (China) (Jiang et al. 2017). The results obtained from its predictive model were accurate up to 70–80% (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Furthermore, an AI algorithm based upon patient information was developed to predict the mortality rate of COVID-19 pandemic (Wang et al. 2020a). Supervised learning techniques and ML algorithms are employed in designing of prognostic markers (Zlobec 2005), alongside artificial neural networks (Zafeiris et al. 2018; Bertolaccini et al. 2017). AI has number of applications not only in prediction and classification but also in diagnosis of infectious diseases like COVID-19 (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Machine learning models, digital datasets, and deep learning algorithms are used to detect the infection in patients (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). The AI parameter is employed in ophthalmology, dermatology, radiology, and pathology (Kulkarni et al. 2020). The routine diagnostic procedures for COVID-19 detection are time-consuming and require accuracy thus a time saving and accuracy centered approach is required (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). Deep learning method was employed radiological diagnostic procedure of COVID-19 and 85.5% accuracy in internal evaluation and 95.2% accuracy in external validation was observed (Wang et al. 2020b). A CAD4TB software based CAD4 COVID screening program is developed by Thirona and Delft Imaging which is currently being employed in COVID-19 screening (ITN 2020). Stand-alone diagnostic booths have been developed as an innovative approach to facilitate off site COVID-19 testing, countries like South Korea, where it is conceptualized as "drive-three" testing station to limit the exposure to health care service providers and conserve use of PPEs (Kapoor et al.). Integrated health information systems (IHiS) of Singapore, in collaboration with Kronika, has developed a temperature screening solution using iThermo, which precludes the requirement manual temperature checks (Kapoor et al.). Use of wearable devices to track heart rate, temperature, sleep duration, and other variables can prove to be efficient in management of COVID-19 infection. Apple in collaboration with CDC, FEMA, and the White House coronavirus task force has developed as Apple Health Check app to serve as infection screening portal and enables the users to answer questions related to infection further directed about steps to follow (Kapoor et al.). "Siri give me guidance" is a voice-based Siri update guiding about symptoms of COVID-19 and telehealth app links to follow. On account of greater susceptibility of geriatrics to COVID-19 infection, Alexa has launched "My Day for Seniors" to enable virtual screening of elderly population (Kapoor et al.). To overcome the problem of ventilator setting in treatment of diseases, Ganzert et al. utilized a ML based approach to determine pressure volume curve in artificially ventilated patients with respiratory problems (Ganzert et al. 2002). This approach can prove to be useful in potentiating COVID-19 treatment regimes. Furthermore, intelligent fault diagnosis is another aspect of ML algorithm in which models are developed to detect the machine faults (Lei et al. 2020). Stratifyd, a data analyst company, utilizes AI algorithms to scan the social platforms post and cross referencing them with disease description from official sources like WHO for animal health, etc. (MIT Technology Review 2020a). Ramesh Raskar and MIT Media lab team designed an app, Private kit: safe paths to track the traveling path of an individual and detecting whether that individual has come in contact with another infected individuals (MIT Technology Review 2020b). Furthermore, reports have revealed the availability of open research data set related to COVID-19 containing research and review papers from reputed journal and sources like bioRxiv and medRxiv, aiding the researchers to a great extent (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020). AI algorithms are also useful in maintaining medical records, especially when the no. of patients is increasing day by day in COVID-19 pandemic (Crevier 1993). AI can also be used for identification of useful drugs and accelerated vaccine development process in COVID-19 pandemic (Gupta et al. 2020). It is also helpful in conduct of clinical trials related to COVID-19. AI algorithms can evaluate the intensity of viral infection by contact tracing of the individuals and identification of hotspots (Vaishya et al. 2020a). Various other companies have contributed in management of COVID-19 pandemic by aiding in manufacturing of medical equipment and products, as depicted in Table 5 (Elavarasan and Pugazhendhi 2020).

News: Startup on Medium
Site: medium.com

Each year, tech startups all over the world are trying to reach the top with their breathtaking and sometimes crazy ideas. What are the hottest topics now and what are still exotic to the market of technology? We collected for you 15 tech startup ideas that have Uber-like potential this year. The Most Exciting Startup Ideas Speaking about the best ideas for tech startups, it's always better to start with the topics that are already popular: although the market is overstocked, you have a guarantee of success if you have a good product to offer. Here is how profitable startup ideas look in 2021: Healthcare app: it's no surprise that healthcare is #1 point of people's interest now, so creating an app that could facilitate doctor-patient communication and aggregate patient's medical info at one place is at high demand now; On-demand services app: it would be extremely convenient if different home and life services like cleaning, plumbing, cake ordering, beauty-services, etc. are available in the single app. Different companies have already started offering such services, but still there is no ultimate product; CRM for small business: CRMs like Hubspot, Salesforce and others traditionally target big and medium-sized companies, but the niche of startups and small businesses is still abandoned despite the existing demand; Employee training app: after the pandemic crisis, companies from numerous industries revealed a shortage of high-level professionals, and a need in quick training of newcomers. Both these problems could be solved with the help of dedicated training app; Finance management app: although such products are already available on the market, people are still in search of the one that would fulfil all their desires like right purchases categorisation, expenses control and real-time tracking; Travel-planning app: after COVID-19 planning trips become a risky task, and in case you get ill there is no guarantee that a travel agency will return the money, so creating a special web app that would aggregate information about countries, hotels, restaurants and tickets is in high demand now; AR shopping app: companies like IKEA and Sephora have already tried to use augmented reality to sell their products, but now, when people prefer to shop online in order to stay safe, it's more relevant than ever. Blue Oceans of 2021 Our list of best web app ideas is not limited to popular topics, as you can always make a unique startup which nobody did before and become a giant corporation like Uber. Here is the list of startup ideas which stay fresh in 2021: ML-based astrology: lots of people all over the world follow horoscopes every day, so creating an algorithm that infers data from the daily horoscopes and predicts their patterns will definitely bring you a fortune; Memes developing app: the idea sounds insane, but internet memes are growing in popularity each year, so creating an app where users could easily find, store, create and exchange memes is a highly proficient idea; YouTube radio/ChildTube: YouTube has a great popularity, impacting our lives greatly during the last 10 years, so the demand for its lacking products like radio or child app is only growing; Car services app: it could aggregate the info about the nearest car service stations and offer an option of direct online registration for a needed one, whether it's fuelling, repairing or tire changing; Family web app: such a product could be a helper in daily routine tasks and organising leisure time and hobbies of the family members; Interior design app: with the help of AR technology, people could economize on designer's services and create their best fitted flat designs on their own; Messages aggregator app: checking different messengers every hour has become a daunting task for a great number of people, while a single messages aggregating platform would make them much happier; Help alert app: such an app would help people in danger to give a SOS signal onto three stated telephone numbers by just pressing a button. Web Applications Types After you come up with a brilliant tech startup idea, it's time to decide upon the type of your web application. Let's look onto the types of web applications and define their pros and cons for different types of businesses, as it will help you to choose the one that is more suitable for your needs: Static apps — have no flexibility, as the user sees the page just as it is stored on the server, and any changes appear only after the page is completely loaded. Nevertheless, such web apps still can integrate videos and animated objects, and have a bunch of bonuses: easy hosting, low development cost, simple indexation and fast transferring on a low internet connection. They are a perfect match for creating professional resumes, marketing landing pages and promo sites. Dynamic apps — have a more complex structure than static apps, as they need a database to store data and fetch it in real-time due to the users' requests. Thanks to the use of CMSs and modern technology stack like JQuery, Node.js, Python, etc. dynamic apps fall into a variety of following types: Single-Page Applications : perform logic on the web browser instead of the server, that's why they are quick, easy to debug and user-friendly; brightest examples are Gmail, Netflix and Pinterest; : perform logic on the web browser instead of the server, that's why they are quick, easy to debug and user-friendly; brightest examples are Gmail, Netflix and Pinterest; Multi-Page Applications : logic is stored at the backend, and each time a user performs a new action a new page from the server is displayed in the browser, like in Amazon and eBay; : logic is stored at the backend, and each time a user performs a new action a new page from the server is displayed in the browser, like in Amazon and eBay; Portal Web Apps : here various sections like documents, chats, friends list, groups, are accessible on the home page. This is the best variant for businesses that want to create customised experience according with their users' requirements, like it is in student and education portals, patient medical profiles, etc.; : here various sections like documents, chats, friends list, groups, are accessible on the home page. This is the best variant for businesses that want to create customised experience according with their users' requirements, like it is in student and education portals, patient medical profiles, etc.; Animated Web Apps : the content is represented by using various animated effects and technologies like FLASH, HTML5, CSS3, etc., but their huge drawback is that they can't be SEO optimized and search engines can't get data from them, that's why their use is limited now; : the content is represented by using various animated effects and technologies like FLASH, HTML5, CSS3, etc., but their huge drawback is that they can't be SEO optimized and search engines can't get data from them, that's why their use is limited now; Rich Internet Apps — have functionality of desktop apps, but work in browsers with the help of the client-side plugins like FLASH and Silverlight. They are very engaging and have great user experience, the brightest examples are Adobe Flash and Google Docs; — have functionality of desktop apps, but work in browsers with the help of the client-side plugins like FLASH and Silverlight. They are very engaging and have great user experience, the brightest examples are Adobe Flash and Google Docs; JavaScript Powered Web Apps : use JS frameworks like Angular.js, React.js, Vue.js, Node.js, which allows to customise and adapt apps to their users, like it is in LinkedIn and Uber; : use JS frameworks like Angular.js, React.js, Vue.js, Node.js, which allows to customise and adapt apps to their users, like it is in LinkedIn and Uber; Progressive Web Apps : users of these apps have access to its complete features using mobile browsers, and performance here is high even despite slow internet connection, like in Spotify and OLX; : users of these apps have access to its complete features using mobile browsers, and performance here is high even despite slow internet connection, like in Spotify and OLX; eCommerce Web Apps: complex web apps, development of which involves handling online transactions, building databases of products and customers, as well as their real-time updating. The examples of such apps are Lancôme and Flipkart. Thus, a compact landing page could be a good choice for a legal adviser, a portal web app can fit a medical services company, while an eCommerce app is the best decision for a commercial giant. How to Make a Technological Choice Here you should start from defining your target audience and the demands of your future users. It's good to arrange a thorough research, even to analyse your audience behaviour in social media. It will help you to upsurge the marketability of your brand and make it popular. Then you should proceed with the following steps: Make a requirement analysis : how do you see your final product? Which features should it possess? Should it be free or not, and how will you make money on it? Think about it before the realisation is begun; : how do you see your final product? Which features should it possess? Should it be free or not, and how will you make money on it? Think about it before the realisation is begun; Choose your development approach, framework, and design : decide which type of web application you want, as well as the platform for its realisation and design; set a timeline for the project; : decide which type of web application you want, as well as the platform for its realisation and design; set a timeline for the project; Get the right technology partner: decide whether you have enough resources to fulfil your project, and if not find a reliable partner. Consult with your partner upon the type of application you've chosen. Now you are ready to create your own application. There are myriads of ways to realise a good startup idea, but only few of them will hit the charts in 2021, so we hope this article will help you to make the right choice. Still it can be difficult to hit the ground with all these factors to think about, so if you have a great idea of a tech startup, you can always contact us and get a free personal consultation upon your project. We will help you to choose the right web application type for your business idea, and together will decide upon framework and design. For more information, please click here.

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10 New realities before and after COVID-19 and the Invasion of Subscription Economy. Amirsan Roberto Follow Jul 5 · 13 min read We are halfway through 2020. Self-evident truth makes it crystal clear that there is too much to swallow and digest to make sense of everything that is happening in our new reality. It is also important to mention that there is no doubt that the world will remember this year just like they remember 2012 when everyone was expecting the end of the world. But what happens after COVID 19? The Economist has its perspective The history of human civilization has witnessed thousands of revolutions, natural disasters, technological developments, and fluctuations. Chances are high that this tendency will continue despite our wishes, plans, or expectations. COVID-19`s legacy in the world is going to remain and remind us about new realities. The crisis surely provides a sudden glimpse into a future world, one in which digital has become central to every interaction, pushing entities further up the adoption curve almost overnight. For others, it is a glimpse of a disaster for not having required skillsets, resources to adopt new platforms, and most importantly, and an ability to understand the value of the digital transaction. McKinsey`s Simon Blackburn and Jeremy Schneider along with their partners put together one of the must-have reads named Digital strategy in a time of crisis helping leaders to navigate change, explore existing technologies and obtain a big picture of the digital strategy. Practicing as an entrepreneur during the COVID-19 era, as in my case, it has taught me several lessons. It has forced me, my team, and my partners to reimagine and rethink new frontiers of business management, startup kick-offs, and remote work lifestyles. With hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide, there is no doubt this pandemic will be a defining moment for everyone. While some businesses struggled and others thrived, once all of this chaos is over and we can resume our regular lives, entrepreneurs should obtain some valuable lessons from these challenging times. The following are 10 lessons I have learned during the crisis that I hope will help to ignite some ideas and engage in further conversation. 1. The approaching Death of an offline business Watching rise and fall of Richard Branson`s empire was indeed jaw-dropping and eyebrow-raising. I kept telling myself, "You have got to be kidding me." A heavyweight embodiment of entrepreneurship with spectacular experience and charisma to request a bailout from the British government to save his business, despite his diverse portfolio of businesses, one after the other most of his offline ventures suffered major blows. That was just the beginning, WeWork`s rise and fall and overall work ethic as we know today, will change forever with new regulations, social distancing, and checkpoints for visitors, vendors, and clients. This new reality will apply for other real estate venue providers that will meet the same fate in the face of the pandemic. One of the greatest success stories is Airbnb, which was anticipating an IPO while also suffering a major blow despite promising growth and an agile team. WeWork, Airbnb, and Virgin are not alone. Big brothers like Disney, Delta, and Marriott are among others. The complete list can be seen in the following infographics. Some of the industries and numbers that were affected by COVID-19 in the US alone is pretty scary, not to mention less developed countries that are already experiencing dire consequences that will likely last through the end of 2020. The number of people that were laid off around the world has been tremendous. According to the International Labour Organization, more than six percent of the global workforce is working less hours, with the APAC region leading with 125M people followed by 24M in the Americas and 19M in Africa. One of the important takeaways from the pandemic pertains to remaining competitive. Any business that is highly dependent on offline activities or human engagement should reconsider their business model and adopt new ways to stand out from their competition in the business. To stay motivated, check out this article by Oliver Isaacs-8 Ways for Your Business to Stay Ahead During the Coronavirus Outbreak. 2. A new wave of (COVID) Innovation(s) Just like the concept of the glass being half full or half empty, during any kind of crisis one can be part of a solution or the problem. Since the inception of the outbreak entrepreneurs and various industry professionals took the lead to explore and witness cracks in the system. One of the most outstanding platforms that collects COVID-related innovations and know-how was developed by Reinier Evers and his team. COVID innovations is the platform that collects life-saving, life-improving and life-changing innovative solutions that make a positive impact, today there are over 900+ solutions that are accessible to everyone to look at and adopt in anywhere in the world, having been inspired by the platform I wrote two articles named COVID Innovations or How 20 Companies are making Social Impact Great and 10 Non-Influencers redefining Influence during Pandemic. Opportunity: $1 Million USD Funding to fight COVID-19 Other areas, such as digital payments, digital collaboration tools, entertainment, delivery services (food, grocery, anything), productivity applications, streaming, and e-Commerce are destined to grow. To get a sense of the top 10 fastest growing e-Commerce items delivered, see the following chart by visual capitalist Intrigued to learn more? Check out this article 12 Industry Channels Expected to Thrive Post-COVID-19 3. Healthcare COVID-19 put the healthcare industry to the test. All technological and digital advancements that have been achieved prior to COVID-19 invasion seemed to be cutting edge. I bet, if Theranos was around, its value would be priceless. However, in the face of the pandemic, even well-developed European countries like Spain and Italy suffered massive blows. Furthermore, the rising number of casualties in North and South America is simply scary, being deeply dependent on ventilators. The lack of vital and accessible testing kits is simply resulting in the death of more people. As a result, public and private medical professionals are working tirelessly to develop a vaccine to cease the spread of the coronavirus. Healthcare undoubtedly will become a priority for VC funds, investors and state-owned foundations to fund more research and experimentation to improve the cracks in the system as soon as possible. Cracks in the system are great opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs to team up with medical professionals to develop solutions that will manage the virus and improve the livelihood of millions. The role of technology in navigating opportunities is going to be very essential. KPMG`s Mike Krajecki wrote probably one of the controversial pieces related to Healthcare: Technology for healthcare's new reality: Four emerging technology solutions to help healthcare organizations prepare for the new reality. 4. Mask-wearing is new normal In 2014 when I visited China for the first time, the first thing that caught my attention was the number of people for whom wearing a mask was a social norm. At the time, I was not well informed about pollution or the great number of factories, or had the slightest idea about climate change. In fact, I became more aware of climate change and its effects while in China. Today, more than 30+ Fashion Brands include manufacturing Stylish Coronavirus Masks on their agenda. Zara Stone wrote one of the greatest pieces about it: The Real Reason Every Fashion Company Is Now Making Face Masks. Like it or not, Life will never be the same after COVID and Mask wearing is the new normal on a subconscious level that we will get used to. 5. Mental health is a new frontier What happens after COIVD-19 is defeated? What will happen with those who were laid off and those who had to close their businesses (for example, F&B, gyms, movie theatres, nightlife entertainment, and others)? What about those who have to pay back their loans or pushed to mortgage their property to remain afloat? And those who work internationally or conduct meetings across multiple time zones. The list is long. Mental health basically becomes another form of a pandemic to help victims to get back to normal lifestyles. Canada-based Angus Reid Institute conducted research about the consequences of COVID-19 in regards to mental health. The key findings in one of the well-developed countries of the world are worrisome: At least one-in-five residents in each region of the country fall into the Hardest Hit category. Alberta has the highest number (32%) and Quebec the lowest (20%). One-quarter (24%) of the Hardest Hit say that their relationships at home have suffered since the COVID-19 outbreak began, compared to just six percent of those in the Managing Well group. Regardless of where they place on the COVID-19 Impact Index, three-quarters of Canadians in each group agree that it is too soon to begin lifting restrictions on businesses and public gatherings in their province To imagine a mental state in other countries is a tough and scary challenge. All I can do is imagine the influx of patients and victims of the post-COVID era. As someone who experienced mental health-related challenges I shared my story in my previous piece How 10 Days of Solitude Resulted in Doubling My Productivity that still helps me to tackle the magnitude of this pandemic. I shared my story and journey to explore the importance of mental health and a solution that still works for me today, however, the solution that works for me may not be applicable to others universally. During COVID-19, mental health has already become as vital as ventilators. It is one of the industries that will become a top priority for professionals to team up with to develop solutions for those who have suffered. 6. The rise of remote work lifestyle and virtual office For nearly three months now, working from home has become the new norm. It's not just a fad — in fact, 99% of the 2,500 remote workers surveyed said they wanted to work remotely for the rest of their career. Remote work revolution is inevitable, just like I shared in my previous article about the man who built a billion-dollar company by hiring 700 employees remotely redefined the history of productivity and according to CB Insights, there are over 65 startups enabling remote work to maximize our productivity, chances are very high the number of startups will evolve to take advantage of changing environment If interested in accessing a complete report, click here 7. The power of Blockchain When the COVID-19 outbreak hit China to optimize workflow/efficiency, Blockchain became a big part of it. Based on my Chinese experience, I wrote How these 7 AI and Blockchain Startups Are Fighting #Coronavirus. The beauty of Blockchain provides multi-party transparency, paper-free interactions, and industry-wide process automation. Data management — Data collection can be automated as it stores data in the ledger (for example, patients' symptoms, treatments, and progress is kept on a single platform, which will help the doctors and experts to diagnose, treat, and research collaboratively as VS work separately and independently). This protects the data against unauthorized access, hence, maintaining privacy. Supply chain management — I remember seeing toilet paper becoming the Holy Grail in Germany, Spain, and Italy. I would never have imagined that the race to purchase toilet paper would remind of a world war of some kind. The cracks in supply chain management and the lack of trustworthy information during pandemic were obvious. Blockchain for supply chain can solve the problem just like with data management. Digital ledger technology can keep a record of all real-time transactions happening in the system. A complete record of product history, tracking details, and shared history can be accessed by manufacturers and users to check the originality of the product. IBM, for example, has started incorporating Blockchain in its supply chain management systems. The number of cases is going to increase. In the future, I`ll share a detailed article dedicated to Blockchain, Social Impact, and COIVD challenges. 8. The subscription economy From manufacturing to relationship economy, therefore, the subscription economy says the Founder of Zuora in his iconic pitch deck. Businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs are constantly looking for new ways to optimize their business models, and the subscription business model is consuming the world. Let's face it, the average person connected online probably subscribes at least for five services. I personally pay for Spotify, LinkedIn, Online Storage, Grammarly, Netflix, Upwork, Skillshare, and scores of other services to remain as competitive as possible in the market. This is just a start, the numbers are growing and not just overall. Even if your business isn't using a subscription model, your competitors likely are or are planning to. My team and I are thinking how we could potentially use the subscription business model to bring more value to our new businesses. It is so simple and affordable, and so addictive that the business model tricks millions of people to move from owning the product to simply using it upon demand. According to Digitalist Magazine: By 2022, 53% of all software revenue will be generated from a subscription model Want more? Bianca Faidutti and her team at Fusebill put together 11 Interesting Statistics on the Subscription Business Model that you should look into. The overall picture makes it clear that the rise of subscriptions are going to disrupt businesses across various industries just like Blockchain. In his interview, Zuora`s Tien Tzuo makes his case: Why Every Business Will Soon Be a Subscription Business. Everything you purchase — from transportation to entertainment to groceries — will soon come with a monthly plan. Regardless of your business, location, industry, and target audience, consumers will keep exploring opportunities to minimize their expenses and look for alternative service providers that offer more benefits and features for the same or less (subscription) fee. And guess what? Your clients will be someone else`s with a single click. 9. Plan your work and brace for contingency COVID-19's merciless invasion made it crystal clear that we can have 5 to10-year business plans, expectations, arrangements, and agreements, however, it can change in a matter of days or weeks. And it did in the case of COVID-19. Ironically, here I am becoming less analytical and more philosophical — in every crisis, there is an opportunity. I remember reading how Fanta succeeded in selling its beverages in Nazi Germany. In one of my previous articles titled, Researching 30 Profiles under 30 that became Millionaires in the 21st century led me to re-discover 3 Lessons, I share the story of Sir Isaac Newton and his "Aha" moment leading to his remarkable apple fall story that we all know today and shapes our understanding about gravity. Gabriel Marquez Garcia gave up everything spending almost two years writing his book "One Hundred Years of Solitude," the novel that made him famous. He sold everything he had i his house and borrowed food to survive, the book was published in 1967 and is believed to have sold more than 30 million copies. It helped him win the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature Bitcoin`s iconic white paper and its mysterious author S. Nakomoto released its work after 2008`s world`s financial crisis, transforming future unknowingly Examples are endless, more innovations, more technological advancements, more competition, will only propel disruption further, and keeping an eye on the big picture while working on the plan is a strategy that helps me personally navigate. 10. The future is now The last item of this article is not a new reality, but a self-fulfilling prophecy that can be decoded based on our experience and understanding of the world. What has become very clear to me is that in the 21st century with the power of the internet, great teams, and the right timing, anything can be done. One`s location, knowledge, ethnic belonging, or social status does not matter. That`s the wonder and influence of technology and digital capabilities. And it is only going to get better, faster, and more advanced. In 2015, Bill Gross shared a seven-minute story showcasing the single biggest reason why start-ups succeed. It was indeed an eye-opening talk that is the embodiment of how the future is now: Are you a startup looking for funding? Here is a great visual powered by Jyri Engeström if you have an idea and are not sure what to do or how to start. The startup ecosystem is changing quickly and drastically. For a bigger and deeper picture, Global Startup Ecosystem is the best source to make use of. The team published some awesome reports. Click here to access the report for 2020. To understand the technology and the digital landscape, I enjoy reading reports by Statista. Click here to access a free report for 2020. If you happen to experience difficulties accessing it, leave a comment below and I`ll gladly forward you a copy for 2020 and 2019. Both have helped me in my strategic thinking. I hope all of the resources I've included will serve some of your needs and enlighten you in some way. I was so inspired to share that I wrote this piece in 10 hours and in a single sitting. You are welcome to share comments, feedback, and ideas. I'd be glad to engage in further discussions with others as passionate about these topics as I am.

News: Startup on Medium
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No matter in which corner of the world you are living, the Coronavirus Outbreak is incredibly affecting everyone's life and pushing the economy in the doom. On the one side, where lockdown is forcing people to stay at home behind the locked doors and shutting down their businesses, on the other hand, the mobile app development industry is rising at the fastest-paced. Let's have a glance over stats and facts to better understand the position of the mobile app industry during coronavirus: The forecast from Statista reveals that mobile apps are projected to generate approx 935 billion US dollars that is a double of 461 billion US dollars in 2019.0 By 2022, it has been projected that consumer spending on an app will be increased by 92% to $157 billion globally. According to eMarket, the share of mobile in the overall US online sales will reach almost 50% by 2020, and mobile app downloads are projected to reach 258 billion by 2022 that is 45% higher than 2017. In a nutshell: According to the above figures, one thing is clear that the mobile app industry is growing without showing any sign of downwards. Many of you must be reading these statistics with raised eyebrows that how it is possible, especially during this flu season, when businesses are trying hard to survive in the shrinking market. Let's dig deep to understand right from starting…. Highlights of the Content What Is the On-Demand App Industry and How Do They Work? Reasons Behind Increasing Demand of Mobile App Development Industry During Coronavirus. Type of On-demand Apps in Trend During Coronavirus On-Demand Grocery Delivering Apps On-Demand Healthcare Service Apps On-Demand Social Media Apps On-Demand Education Apps Cost to Develop On-demand Apps Conclusion Dive Deep in each point… 1. What Exactly is On-Demand Industry and How Do They Work? Undoubtedly, on-demand apps are spreading in the marketplace like a fire, as they are playing an essential role in creating a layer between consumers and businesses by simply creating an app that promotes explicitly your business products and services. In other words, the on-demand industry is immediately fulfilling the needs of the customers by providing simple access to the products and services they are looking for. Since on-demand apps are specially developed to target particular services, therefore it adds convenience, speed, and simple access to the customers. The on-demand app industry is working with three crucial components, including suppliers, technology companies, and consumers. The IT company acts as the middle-person that bridges a gap between businesses and customers. The IT company builds an app considering the specific requirements of the suppliers and simultaneously keeping in mind the needs of targeted audiences. By deploying the best-suited technology, they develop a platform where consumers can easily access the services offered by the businesses. 2. Reasons Behind Increasing Demand of Mobile App Development Industry During Coronavirus. Today billions of people across the world are under lockdown due to the coronavirus and strictly following the Government guidelines for Social distancing. But the entire scenario is raising the challenges for many people even to manage their essential commodities, including groceries, food, medicines, and more. In that case, the only option left for people is to use the on-demand applications to quench their basic needs and push businesses to enter the on-demand industry to create a robust online business presence. And worldwide, essential on-demand services are seeking a constant rise in demand. According to Statista, these are the few major fields affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. Reasons Why On-Demand Mobile App Development Solutions Are Increasing In Demand During Coronavirus: — Contactless Deliveries According to resources, almost 95% of US families are using at least one on-demand app to manage their needs during this quarantine period. The rapidly increasing cases of coronavirus all across the world have increased the fear among people to follow social distancing and avoid direct contact with the suppliers. This is where businesses are rapidly adopting on-demand services to prevent contact between the delivery professionals and users and broke the transmission chain. — Providing One App with Multiple Choices When it comes to buying anything, consumers always look for a variety of options, no matter whether they are buying offline or online. A reputed software development company can develop an on-demand app with all essential features that allow users to make a purchase decision by merely accessing the multiple options for products and services. — Offering Quick and Convenient Shopping Experience There is no clue how long this coronavirus pandemic will last in this world, and this is the reason consumers flocking to shops and panic buying overstock. While most shops are running out of stock and shutting down, On-demand apps are flawlessly working with proper planning to manage reorders and providing quick yet hassle-free shopping experience to the users. To ensure the regular flow of goods and services, the on-demand apps are working with thousands of professional delivery staff to prevent buying panic and ensure convenience shopping right from the comfort of their home. — Spreading Hygiene Awareness In the wake of coronavirus, people are panicking everywhere right from buying essentials to maintaining hygiene. But the matter of the fact is, they know far less about the virus. In that case, guiding or educating your customers about what necessary steps they should take to deal with the situation and ways to protect your community's welfare, can be a great initiative. App developers help businesses to customize the on-demand app with this exclusive feature of creating awareness and making consumers feel safe. — Increase Customer Satisfaction Users feel fear to step outside in the streets or marketplace, but on-demand applications have made people get rid of this fear and purchase their choice of products through an app. The instant or 24-hour delivery services further enhance customer satisfaction and leave them with a happy shopping experience. — Increasing Business Revenue The on-demand apps are the clear boon for businesses during this Coronavirus season. On the one hand, on-demand apps providing doorstep deliveries to the consumers; on the other hand, these apps are providing great opportunity to add revenues to the pocket of business owners. 3. What Type of On-Demand Apps Are Trending During Coronavirus Pandemic? The impact of coronavirus on various businesses acts differently. On one side, businesses that require face to face customer interaction may be losing their grounds, whereas, the businesses that can offer their services through the doorstep deliveries are seeing a surge in demand. Many of you believe that the current outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic harms businesses. However, some industries are enjoying the unseen benefits, even in this gray situation, by merely investing in on-demand applications. a.) On-demand Grocery Delivering Apps- Walmart Grocery, Instacart, and Shipt On-demand apps are not the new concept for businesses and customers, but according to the app store intelligence firm Apptopia, online grocery apps, including Walmart Grocery, Instacart, Shipt, Instashop, are setting the new record of daily downloads. Comparing the average daily downloads in February to mid-March, these brands(Instacart, Walmart Grocery, and Shipt) have witnessed 218%, 160%, and 124% higher daily downloads as compared to other days. The forecast from SuperMarket News, grocery apps have seen a 98% increase in the average number of daily downloads in February. b.) On-Demand Healthcare Apps — Medi24, Push Doctors, AmWell The forecast from Statista has revealed that the global healthcare market will reach $90.49 Billion in 2020 from $21.7 Billion in 2018. But, the coronavirus pandemic has pushed this industry to the next level and projected to generate higher than 33.7% revenue. The Coronavirus pandemic is forcing nations to stay under lockdown even for the essential services. However, the demand for doctors and medicines can't be compromised, especially during this flu season. So, where hospitals and clinics are filled with virus cases, on-demand healthcare apps are convenient to access even for medical supplies as well. Medi24: A Switzerland based telehealth app was launched in 1999 with a team of 90 nurses and 25 doctors and used to take 6,000 calls daily. But, the press release of Allianze Partners stated that over the past month, they had handled 70,000 calls that is 34% higher than the previous year. Out of 70,000 calls, they have attended 30,000 calls related to coronavirus and have recommended self-treatment to the patients. Push Doctor: A Manchester-based online medical consultation app has observed a 70% rise in consultations in the last month. Well: The leading e-telehealth application has observed a 400% hike in the number of downloads. c.) On-Demand Social Media Apps — Netflix, Facebook, Tiktok, YouTube While coronavirus has locked down everyone behind the doors with no work, therefore people are finding entertainment on streaming apps like Netflix, YouTube, social media video apps like Tiktok, Musically, and getting connected with others over social media apps like Facebook. TikTok: With over 500 million users, this video making app is already drolling over the teens, but its usage percentage has drastically changed from January 21 to March 24. The average daily traffic has been shifted from 16 million to 19 million in two months. Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube: The Coronavirus pandemic has imposed a sudden hike in the streaming industry. According to reports, consumption of live-television, on-demand streaming, and video apps have seen an 8% to 22% rise in viewership. d.) On-Demand Education Apps- Byjus, ClassDojo, DragonBox With lockdown in force, live online teaching has become one of the recent trends in the education industry. The forecast from Statista predicted that on-demand education mobile apps would make 243.8 million US dollars in 2022. In a nutshell: Considering the above-stated figures and track record, it is clear that hiring mobile app developers is a worthwhile decision to survive in the sinking market. The growth of the mobile app business in 2020 is creating great opportunities for the businesses of all domains as they are increasing in demand all across the world. 4. How Much Does It Cost To Develop an On-Demand Application in 2020? Are you convinced of the growth of the on-demand app development industry during the Coronavirus pandemic and planning to launch your business app? But not sure about the development cost and time, then let me tell you that there is no straightforward answer to your question. The development cost of any app is depending upon multiple factors, including app idea, the complexity of the app, choice of development techniques, integration of features and functionalities, choice of operating platform, and many more. According to the survey report of Clutch, the average price of app development from $25,275 to 727,500 and can go higher depending upon the complexity of the app and its features. Here is the bifurcation of factors affecting the cost of app development: Note: All these estimations are based on the survey report of Clutch that has been conducted with 10 leading companies to determine the average cost of the app development. However, the average cost to avail Android app development services are starting from $18 to $30 per hour developer's cost. Ending Note To end this blog, it is worth mentioning that the COVID-19 fight is not just a health emergency but also putting our economy at the alerting point. On one side, where small businesses are finding it hard to survive with the current lockdown in countries across the globe, on the other side, on-demand app development services are seeing a spike in demand. No matter in which domain you are working, on-demand apps can provide you the way to reach your consumers and provide doorstep deliveries by keeping in mind the community safety and hygiene of employees and customers. So if you are still thinking that developing an on-demand app for your business is a complicated task for you, then it is the right time to hire app developers to discuss your project details and get a perfect solution in real-time.

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Health Catalyst, Inc. (NASDAQ:HCAT) Q2 2020 Earnings Conference Call August 11, 2020 5:00 PM ET Company Participants Adam Brown - SVP, IR Dan Burton - CEO Patrick Nelli - CFO Conference Call Participants Robert Jones - Goldman Sachs Anne Samuel - JPMorgan Ryan Daniels - William Blair Sean Wieland - Piper Sandler Sandy Draper - Truist Securities Elizabeth Anderson - Evercore Stephanie Davis - SVB Leerink Richard Close - Canaccord Genuity David Grossman - Stifle Daniel Grosslight - Citi David Larson - Verity Sean Dodge - RBC Capital Markets John Ransom - Raymond James Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Health Catalyst Inc. Q2, 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'll now like to turn the conference to your first speaker today, Adam Brown, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir. Adam Brown Good afternoon and welcome to Health Catalyst's earnings conference call for the second quarter of 2020, which ended on June 30, 2020. My name is Adam Brown. I'm the Senior Vice President of Investor Relations for Health Catalyst. And with me on the call is Dan Burton, our Chief Executive Officer; and Patrick Nelli, our Chief Financial Officer. A complete disclosure of our results can be found in our press release issued today as well as in our related Form 8-K furnished to the SEC, both of which are available on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.healthcatalyst.com. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded, and a replay will be available following the conclusion of the call. During the call, we will make forward-looking statements pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 regarding trends, strategies, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and results of operations, our pipeline conversation rates; customer discount on professional services; and our general anticipated performance of the business. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current views and expectations as of today, and should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date. We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements or outlook. Actual results may materially differ. Please refer to the risk factors in our form 10-Q for 2019, for the first quarter of 2020 filed with the SEC on May 13, 2020. And our Form 10-Q for the second quarter of 2020 that will be filed with the SEC. We will also refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures to provide additional information to investors. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to their most comparable GAAP measures is provided in our press release. With that, let me turn the call over to Dan for his prepared remarks. And then Patrick will subsequently provide his prepared remarks. Dan and Patrick will then take your questions. Dan? Dan Burton Thank you, Adam and thank you to everyone who has joined us this afternoon. Let me first start by expressing our ongoing gratitude to our heroic national health systems and their front-line workers. We are both grateful and honored that our health system customers have continued to trust us to meaningfully to support them in this time of great need. Next, let me share that the current COVID-19 surge likely indicates that our country and national healthcare system will be under some amount of strain over the coming months. With that said we are highly encouraged as we continue to witness meaningful evidence that the healthcare provider ecosystem is significantly more well equipped, and well prepared in responding and operating effectively in the midst of our new normal. Lastly, by way of introductory comments, I would share that racial inequities remain at the forefront of our national conversation. Health Catalyst is committed to not only joining the many voices calling for justice and change, but also to using our data and analytics to create equitability in healthcare, specifically we are committed to continuing to play a meaningful role in using data and analytics to support our customers and their efforts to better understand, and resolve these disparities in healthcare. I'll begin today's call by communicating our second quarter 2020 financial results. First, let me share that I am pleased with our performance across the board, especially in light of the macroeconomic backdrop. To start, I'm happy to report that our total revenue for Q2 2020 was $43.3 million. This represents an outperformance relative to the midpoint of our guidance. Total adjusted gross margin in the second quarter was 49%, an increase of approximately 20 basis points compared to the first quarter of 2020. This quarter-over-quarter gross margin growth was achieved despite providing the COVID-19 related professional services discounts we discussed on our last earnings call. And our Q2 2020 adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $4.2 million, which also represents an outperformance relative to the midpoint of our guidance, and shows an improvement from a loss of $5.7 million for the same period in the prior year. Now let me transition to some of the highlights from the quarter. You'll recall from our previous earnings calls that we measure our company's performance in three primary strategic objective categories of improvement, growth and scale. And we'll discuss our quarterly results with you in each of these categories. The first category, improvement, is focused on evaluating our ability to enable massive, measurable improvements for our customers while sustaining industry leading satisfaction and engagement. I'll first share two examples of recently documented customer improvements from newly published case studies. The first improvement vignette highlights our work with one of our customers supporting their journey to financial and operational recovery from COVID-19. While the latter, demonstrates the customers have widened their apertures and are back to leveraging our technology and services to do meaningful improvement work outside of their COVID-19 responses. First, community health network desire to understand the overall impact of COVID-19 related declines in elective surgeries. The data the community health network needed to understand that impact and prioritize the organization's elective surgery restart plan resided in disparate systems, and would have required hundreds of hours of manual data review. As Health Catalyst customer; however, community health network leveraged DOS, our data platform along with our COVID-19 specific financial impact recovery elective surgery application to gain insight and visibility into procedure trends, specifically our solution allowed community health network to visualize surgical case backlogs by the facility, specialty; and procedure. This enabled the identification of the number and type of procedures that are recoverable; the ability to model the estimated revenue impact of cancellations, and the use of analytics to understand the implications of different restart elective surgery strategies, enabling community health network to optimally meet its patients needs; and also effectively help it recover from COVID-19 revenue losses. Next let me highlight a recent improvement at Banner Health from their work outside of the realm of COVID-19. Banner Health identified considerable variation in surgical supply use across its facilities. The health system desired a data informed strategy that would allow it to maintain high quality outcomes, while simultaneously decreasing costs across its procedures system-wide. To standardize supply use, Banner utilized DOS, along with a robust suite of analytics to help identify variation in high volume high cost surgical procedures. Banner then leverage those analytics to build standardized surgical preference cards for specific high volume procedures allowing them to quickly realize $3.2 million in surgical supply cost savings. Lastly within the improvement category, I'd like to highlight our team member engagement; every six months, we utilize the Gallup organization to measure our team members' engagement levels. In our most recent results, we once again achieved a team member overall satisfaction score in the 99th percentile. While we have consistently ranked between the 95th and 99th percentile in overall team member satisfaction scores, this past period score, the second highest in the company's history was particularly encouraging as we adapted to a remote only culture. As a leadership team, we continued to make a deliberate decision to double down on our team member engagement efforts after the onset of the pandemic. Our hypothesis was that if our team members can feel listened to, and cared for at an extraordinary level in this time of unique challenge; they will continue to produce outstanding work on behalf of our customers. These Gallup results coupled with our customers high satisfaction levels throughout the pandemic are heartening confirmation of our hypothesis coming to fruition. Our next performance measurement category is growth, which we define as adding new customers while also deepening existing customer relationships. In the growth category with COVID-19 as a backdrop, I'll share a detailed update on the state of our company along with some broader perspectives about the healthcare delivery ecosystem as we witness an adjustment to the temporary new normal operating environment. First, I would underscore that the current COVID-19 surge likely indicates that our country and national healthcare ecosystem will be under some amount of continued strain over the coming months. That said a lot has changed since we spoke with you three months ago. Indeed we are encouraged as we continue to witness meaningful evidence that the healthcare provider ecosystem is significantly better equipped, and better prepared to respond to the ongoing pandemic; including its treatment efficacy, supply chain logistics, capacity planning; and broader operational optimization. Likewise, we have observed that the majority of our customers and prospects have started to also focus meaningful mind share beyond their COVID-19 response, as they've effectively adjusted financially and operationally, and have started to refocus on broader clinical, financial and operational improvement work once again. Now let me provide some commentary on what this new normal operating environment means for our business in the near term. First, we're fortunate to have a highly recurring revenue model in which greater than 90% of our revenue is recurring in nature. This model means that the impact of COVID-19 on our top line will be relatively muted in 2020. To that effect, you will hear more from Patrick later in the call when he shares our updated full year 2020 guidance. As it relates to our existing customer relationships, let me first share some color as it relates to our technology. To start, I would highlight that we benefit from a high level of technology revenue predictability, especially our all access DOS subscription customers that have built-in contractual technology revenue escalators. I'm pleased to report that since the onset of COVID-19, our customers overall usage of our data platform has never been higher. A particular note our foundational analytics applications which are crucial components of our COVID-19 technology response have seen a significant increase in usage; averaging a roughly 30% increase since the onset of the pandemic. Additionally, I would share that we have seen usage of our COVID-19 specific products meaningfully shift from those focused on COVID-19 preparedness to those focused on financial recovery and planning analytics in areas such as elective procedures, ambulatory care and revenue cycle. Given all these factors, we would anticipate minimal impact on our technology dollar based retention as a result of COVID-19. Moving on to professional services; we continue to see extremely high levels of engagement of our team member base many of which are engaged on COVID-19 recovery focused work, but also many of which are back to focusing on more general clinical, financial and operational improvement work. As mentioned on our last earnings call, we anticipated providing some proactive and temporary professional services discounts to our existing customers, helping to support them through their short-term COVID-19 related financial strain in the spirit of a long-term partnership. I'm happy to share that we have worked through those discussions, and that they were very well received. As you'll hear more from Patrick as anticipated, we experienced a decline in our professional services gross margin in Q2 as a result of those temporary discounts, and we'd expect a smaller spillover impact on our Q3 professional services gross margin. Given this, we'd anticipate our near-term professional services dollar-based retention to be lower than our expectations at the beginning of the year. Now let me transition to providing some commentary on new DOS customer editions in 2020. First, I would share that we were pleased to sign multiple new customers year-to-date, including after the onset of COVID-19. In particular, I would highlight that we recently added one of the 20 largest health systems in the country as a new DOS subscription customer. We are honored that this health system has chosen Health Catalyst as their enterprise analytics solution. While we were excited to add multiple new customers during the first half of 2020, I would share that more generally we saw a purchasing pause starting in late Q1. Given this consistent with the color that we shared on our last earnings call, our first half 2020 number of net new DOS subscription customer editions was meaningfully lower than we originally anticipated entering the year. As we enter the second half of 2020, we are encouraged by our pipeline. We would characterize our pipeline as being as robust as the same period last year with the overall tone of the conversations and momentum of our sales processes being positive. Given this data, we would anticipate strong bookings conversion in the second half of 2020 similar to last year's levels, while also acknowledging that the COVID-19 situation means that we are in unprecedented times, and thus our historical conversion rates may be less predictive than in the past. Moving on to the longer-term impact of COVID-19, I would reiterate our sentiment from our last earnings call. First, I would share that we cannot think of any event in recent history that has galvanized the awareness and importance of data and analytics more than COVID-19; and thus we believe it will serve as a meaningful tailwind in the industry's adoption of data and analytics. At the health system level, we are seeing COVID-19 highlighting the need for a commercial grade data and analytics solution to replace patchwork homegrown systems. I would also share that we are seeing the potential for meaningful government investment in healthcare data and analytics infrastructure modernization over time. Lastly, I'd share that we anticipate a meaningful long-term impact on our life sciences business as we leverage one of the largest clinically rich repositories of health data in the world for real world insights. Also in the context of our growth efforts, let me next mention that we are looking forward to hosting our seventh Annual Healthcare Analytics Summit in September. While the format will be virtual this year, we continue to believe that this conference represents a meaningful opportunity for Health Catalyst to continue to provide thought leadership within the healthcare data and analytics ecosystem, while carefully listening to our customers and prospects as we further cultivate and deepen those relationships. The theme of this year's conference will be healthcare analytics in the new normal. And we are fortunate to feature many of the leading voices in the country as our keynote speakers. Next I'd like to make a few comments on a recent acquisition of Healthfinch, which we are happy to announce is officially closed. First, I would share that this deal is consistent with the rationale that we provided for our convertible debt raise in April. Healthfinch is a SaaS technology provider of an integration engine delivering insights and analytics into EMR workflows in real time. This acquisition highlights Health Catalyst's ability to integrate and scale software applications on top of our DOS platform. The Healthfinch technology will serve up actionable insights derived from DOS and other Health Catalyst's analytics applications into the EMR at the point of care. Of particular importance and excitement is the strong mission and cultural alignment with the Healthfinch team. We are thrilled to welcome the talented and diverse Healthfinch to Health Catalyst, further enabling our mission to be the catalyst for massive, measurable data informed healthcare improvement. Next, let me make some comments on our announcement today of our definitive agreement to acquire Vitalware. Vitalware offers a revenue workflow optimization, an analytics SaaS technology solution to healthcare providers. The acquisition contemplates a $120 million purchase price, consisting of $70 million in cash from the balance sheet and $50 million in Health Catalyst common stock, plus the potential for an earnout. We are extremely excited to announce this transaction. First, Vitalware provides us with another analytics application offering us a strategic anchor technology in the revenue space, expanding our CFO value proposition. Vitalware's flagship offering is a best-in-class Chargemaster Solution that solves a complex regulatory and billing function needed by all health systems. Additionally, Vitalware brings to bear a meaningful upsell opportunity with new product suites in revenue integrity and price transparency. Ultimately DOS will further enhance these revenue insights by seamlessly integrating billing, claims, pharmacy; and supply data. We also would highlight the value of Vitalware's compelling financial profile, which includes greater than 90% recurring technology revenue with approximately $19 million in 2020 estimated standalone full-year recurring revenue and a 20-plus percent annual historical growth rate. Additionally. Vitalware has approximately 75% gross margins and is adjusted EBITDA breakeven. Lastly, I would highlight that our integration of Vitalware will reinforce our continued commitment to our shared mission, operating principles and cultural attributes, which is a requirement for every acquisition. Please refer to our press released furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K for additional information related to the Vitalware acquisition announcement. Additionally, please note that our guidance figures that will be shared by Patrick at the end of our prepared remarks do not include any anticipated contribution from Vitalware, as the transaction has not yet closed. Lastly, let me note that the 2020 and 2021 GAAP revenue and adjusted EBITDA contribution from Vitalware will be impacted by the timing of the close of the transaction, and the purchase accounting impact of a deferred revenue write-down. I would also share that following the close of the Vitalware transaction, we anticipate having greater than $250 million of cash on our balance sheet, and we continue to be active in considering other strategic acquisition opportunities; both at the analytics applications layer of our stack and in our adjacent markets of life sciences, and international. Lastly before I turn the call over to Patrick, I'd like to share that Todd Cozzens will be completing his service on our Board of Directors effective September 1. I want to take this opportunity to share my heartfelt gratitude for Todd and his eight years of impactful service on our Board. Without Todd's countless contributions to our company over many years starting in its early stages, I am certain that we would not be where we are today. Patrick? Patrick Nelli Thank you, Dan. Before diving into our quarterly financial results, I would like to echo Dan's sentiment and say that I am pleased with our second quarter results, especially in light of the macroeconomic backdrop. For the second quarter of 2020, we generated $43.3 million in total revenue. As Dan mentioned, this represents an out performance relative to the midpoint of our guidance, and it represents an increase of 18% year-over-year. The year-over-year growth was driven primarily by recurring revenue from new customer editions, from existing customers paying higher technology access fees as a result of contractual built-in escalators; from existing customers expanding their services relationships with us. Technology revenue was $25.5 million, an increase of 27% compared to the same period last year, and professional services revenue was $17.8 million, an increase of 6% year-over-year. As Dan mentioned previously, our professional services growth rate was meaningfully impacted by the temporary COVID-19 professional services discounts we provided to a portion of our customer base in the second quarter. For Q2, 2020, we achieved total adjusted gross margin of 49.1%, a decrease of approximately 330 basis points year-over-year. On the technology side, our adjusted gross margin was 68.6%, an increase of approximately 360 basis points year-over-year. This year-over-year increase was mainly driven by existing customers paying higher technology access fees from contractual built-in escalators without the corresponding increase in hosting cost; partially offset by headwinds due to the continued cost associated with transitioning a portion of our customer base to third-party cloud hosted data centers in Microsoft Azure. And on the professional services side, our adjusted gross margin was 21%. This represents a decrease of approximately 1,600 basis points year-over-year and a decrease of approximately 380 basis points relative to Q1, 2020. As previously mentioned, this decrease was mainly the result of selected temporary discounts of our professional services as a result of COVID-19. As Dan mentioned, we believe we have worked through those discount discussions. We anticipate their financial impact; we'll have a partial spillover to Q3 2020 but to a lesser extent than in Q2. In Q2, 2020, adjusted operating expenses totaled $25 million. As a percentage of revenue, adjusted total operating expenses were 59%, which compares favorably to 68% in Q2, 2019. Adjusted EBITDA in Q2, 2020 was a loss of $4.2 million which compares favorably to an adjusted EBITDA loss of $5.7 million in the second quarter of 2019. As Dan mentioned earlier, we are pleased to report that we outperformed the midpoint of our guidance. This adjusted EBITDA performance was mainly driven by the revenue outperformance mentioned previously, as well as some non-headcount expenses that we anticipate will be pushed out to the second half of 2020. Our adjusted net loss per share in Q2, 2020 was $0.15. The weighted average number of shares used in calculating adjusted net loss per share was $38.1 million. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the second quarter of 2020 with $353 million of cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments, compared to $228 million at year end 2019. As a reminder, in April 2020, we issued a private placement of convertible notes with a principal amount of $230 million after deducting the unamortized debt discount related to the conversion feature of $61 million, and unamortized issuance cost of $5 million. As of June 3oth, 2020, the net carrying amount of the liability component is $163.5 million. As it relates to our financial guidance for the third quarter of 2020, we expect total revenue between $43 million and $46 million, and adjusted EBITDA losses between $8.9 million and $6.9 million. In terms of our Q3, 2020 guidance, I wanted to reiterate that our Annual Healthcare Analytics Summit that occurs in Q3, results in a material sales and marketing expense that will impact our adjusted EBITDA performance for the quarter. For the full year 2020, we are providing guidance as follows. Total revenue between $177.2 million and $181.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA losses between $25.5 million and $22.5 million. I'll conclude my prepared remarks by echoing Dan's comments that we are honored that our health system customers have continued to trust us to meaningfully support them in this time of great need. And we take that responsibility very seriously. Dan? Dan Burton Thanks Patrick. I'll conclude my commentary by thanking our committed and highly engaged team members. These teammates and colleagues have worked tirelessly over the last several months in support of our heroic health system customers in response to COVID-19, and I've never been more proud to be associated with these teammates as we work together to fulfill the company's mission; a mission that is more relevant and important now than ever. And with that we are ready for questions. Question-and-Answer Session Operator [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Robert Jones with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open. RobertJones Great. Thanks for the questions. Yes, I guess maybe just to start clearly hearing from hospital systems and other hospital-facing IT companies that there's a slowdown in decision-making, don't think that would come as a huge surprise to anyone. So I'm just curious kind of what your line of sight is through the end of the year? Clearly, the numbers call for some sequential improvement. And then I guess related to that, Dan, you commented about DOS ads this year being expected to be below where you previously would have thought them to be. Any sense you can give us as far as how we should think about that and the impact it might have on 2021 revenue? DanBurton Yes happy to address those items, Bob. First, as it relates to the pipeline that we have been observing today, and I would say over the past few months; as I mentioned in our prepared remarks, we are experiencing a pipeline now that feels much like in prior years in the absence of a pandemic like COVID. So we're seeing movement in our pipeline; we're seeing the robustness of the pipeline. As I mentioned in the second half of this year that feels a great deal like it felt the second half of last year for example. Now as it relates to your second question specifically around the number of net new DOS subscription clients. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we were pleased to sign multiple new DOS subscription clients in the first half of the year, but the total was meaningfully lower than what we would normally anticipate in that first half. As we think about the second half of the year, all of the indications that we see now and even that we've seen over the last couple of months would suggest that we'll have a very similar performance in the second half of this year as compares to the second half of last year. And so if you combine those two, we might expect a net number of DOS subscription clients in 2020 given the pandemic in the high single digits. RobertJones Okay. That's helpful. And then I guess maybe just one on Vitalware. You mentioned it's in 100 and over 150 hospitals today. So just -- was curious if you could talk a little bit about the cross-sell roadmap opportunity? And then as you think about what they bring to the table relative to legacy Health Catalyst? Do you think this is an area now as you think about servicing the hospital CFO that you have a full offering or is this an area where you feel like we should expect maybe further build out either buyer bill as it relates to things servicing more on the financial revenue side? DanBurton Yes, absolutely. So as it relates to our strategic rationale for Vitalware; we viewed DOS as a data platform that can help across all of the major drivers of value that a health system CEO and C-Suite executive team needs to care about. Now our foundation, our beginnings as a company focused a lot on quality improvement, clinical improvement; and that's clearly going to be a continued focus. And we have a number of beachheads; if you think about our technology capabilities to enable through data, and analytics real meaningful quality improvement. Also from a cost perspective, we've benefited from the chorus line of activity based costing as a meaningful anchor or beachhead in the cost related drivers that C-Suite executives at a health system need to care about. We view Vitalware as an important beachhead from a technology application suite perspective in the revenue side of that equation. We've had some complementary capabilities at the data platform layer, and capabilities of the services expertise layer; but we've lacked that technology application beachhead that Vitalware really provides us, and importantly with that beachhead in place and coupling that with our expertise in the revenue space; we can now leverage much more significantly the power of DOS where we can deliver clinical insights, cost insights into the revenue decision making process in an integrated way; leveraging the power of DOS and do things that couldn't be done before this integration. And that's one of the reasons we're most excited about this integration, and why we believe from a cross-sell perspective that there will be meaningful cross-sell opportunities in both directions; both our Health Catalyst DOS subscription base being very excited about adding real capabilities, real technology capabilities in that revenue side of the equation. And likewise with Vitalware clients, now we have an opportunity through the power of DOS to offer more use cases, where we can integrate data in the cost and the quality realms, and help them in other ways from a revenue perspective. So we do believe this is a significant step forward, and we're really excited about it. Patrick anything you'd add? PatrickNelli And as far as the overlap between our two customer bases, since we had 65 DOS subscription customers at the end of last year, Health Catalyst DOS is still fairly underpenetrated in the market. And it means there's relatively little customer overlap and significant bi-directional cross-sell opportunity. Operator Our next question comes from Anne Samuel of JPMorgan. Your line is now open. AnneSamuel Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Just following up to Bob's question on pipeline conversion. For those that are pushing their decisions out something indicated at all what metrics would catalyze them to move forward with you? And then just thinking about the model for next year, do you expect any of those delayed conversions to come through in the first half of next year to kind of help with that 2021 growth? DanBurton Yes, certainly, Anne. And as it relates to the pipeline conversion, we certainly saw a pause in many of our conversations starting in late Q1, and continuing in early Q. But I would characterize our conversations over the last few months across our pipeline as being very productive and positive and moving at a rate that we would typically see in a normal year. And so we have seen from a health system, financial health perspective, and their financial performance improved meaningfully as they reschedule these elective procedures. And in many cases, their improvement in terms of their revenue performance and overall performance has been ahead of what was originally forecasted. And as a result, we believe that has already catalyzed the pipeline to be behaving much more like what we would experience absent a pandemic. And as it relates to the way that this might play out, while there may be some catch-up in late 2020 and perhaps into early 2021, where we see an acceleration and some time made up during that pause point of a few months. There will likely be many other cases and our default assumption is that essentially we just experienced a couple of month delay in most conversations that then has picked up, and will follow a normal conversion timeline that we've experienced historically. AnneSamuel That's really helpful. Thank you and then I guess maybe is there any more color you can provide around the professional services, the discounting kind of improving in the third quarter and should that be gone by the fourth quarter? DanBurton Yes, absolutely. We do view the conversations that we had where we were proactively offering limited near-term discounts usually for a month or a couple of months as being largely behind us. Now the impact of those is as Patrick mentioned in his prepared remarks, we'll have some spillover effect in Q3 although much less than what we've experienced in Q2, but those conversations have completed. That they've been completed and now we're moving forward across our client base in a much more typical normal fashion from a pricing perspective. Operator Our next question comes from Ryan Daniels with William Blair. Your line is now open. RyanDaniels Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question and congratulations on the Gallup scores regarding the employee engagement. I want to ask another follow-up on the DOS ads. I know you said you expect high single digits this year, historically in a year like this we might be looking for low to mid-teens, but I think the hard part for us as analysts and investors is gauging the science of those potential relationships is; you've mentioned that one is with a Top 20 health system, and obviously that's much larger than perhaps a single client. So Patrick, can you maybe speak to the potential kind of revenue signed versus what a typical year might look like versus just simple number of clients? Thanks. PatrickNelli Yes, of course happy to. We've shared previously that an average new DOS subscription customer starts out at a little more than a $1.5 million a year of recurring revenue, split roughly equally between technology and services. To your point, Ryan, the exact price point will be dependent on the range of applications they would like to have access to in range of services, as well as the size of that customer. So there can be some variability on a year-to-year basis. As of now, we would expect our pipeline from a new customer annual recurring revenue size perspective to be roughly similar to what it was in prior years. RyanDaniels That's very helpful color. And then are you seeing any momentum towards a different type of models? I know you offer kind of an all-in Netflix type model versus the DOS and then digital software applications. Are you seeing any trends towards either one of those from the client base converting up in your conversations or new clients looking to maybe start different levels? And I'm talking more about the pipeline given your answer to the prior question, but what are you kind of seeing for the future here? Thanks guys. DanBurton Yes, absolutely. So I think we would characterize the current pipeline and the discussions that we're having as very similar to what we've experienced historically with one note, and that is that as we acquire new capabilities; those new capabilities that we're bringing largely at the apps layer are typically outside of the all-access DOS subscription contract. And so they do represent an incremental opportunity for expansion. Operator Our next question comes from Sean Wieland with Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. SeanWieland Hi, thanks. One more if I could on the deals that you signed so far to date. Are any of these DOS like clients and in particular was that large one? Was that a full DOS or was that DOS light? DanBurton They've been full DOS subscription clients including that Top 20 health system. SeanWieland Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. And then a question on the new version of the population health platform that came out just about a month ago or six weeks ago. Just curious any early feedback on this and there was some chatter out there on challenges with the prior version, and maybe some reparations made to clients as a result. Just curious what the extent of that was? And how the launch of the new platform is going? DanBurton Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the questions, Sean. As it relates to our care management application suite and maybe in the broader context about four or five years ago Health Catalyst began in earnest to build applications at that application suite level. And actually the first application suite that we started with was care management. And so in many ways we feel grateful for all the learnings that we've had as it relates to version one of the care management solution; and there certainly were a number of learnings as we started the rollout of care management version one with alpha and beta clients, we discovered a few issues that we felt we needed to address before a more broad rollout. And we identified those issues before they were apparent to our clients, but consistent with the Health Catalyst way, the mission operating principles and cultural attributes of the company; we felt that absolutely the right thing to do would be to be transparent with these alpha and beta clients in highlighting some of the shortcomings that we were seeing. And in standing behind our commitment to help them by addressing those issues in our second version. And all along the way some of those challenges that we face in care management have informed our work in other application suite categories that have successfully rolled out since that first version of care management. And really across the other application suites, we've been really pleased with the robustness of the technology and the significance of the adoption, and we can trace a lot of that success back to the learnings that we applied from care management version. Version 2.0 is already being rolled out to those alpha and beta clients as a replacement to version one and we've also seen meaningful interest across our existing client base, as well as with regards to prospects and we're excited about a significant step forward in capabilities that version 2 of care management represents. Operator Our next question comes from Sandy Draper with Truist Securities. Your line is now open. SandyDraper Thank you very much. Maybe a question on the -- I guess two questions on the margin side. So probably for Patrick, on the professional services understandably a pretty big drop through on the discounting. And that makes sense but as you come back up do you think is it realistic to by the fourth quarter of this year get back up to the more normalized margin or should we think about that in 2021? And can you remind me as I'm just looking back the professional margins were close to 35% non-GAAP in 2019 and that was up from 29%. What have you said in terms of -- what it would be a normal type gross margin think about once you move through the -- past the sort of discounting states? PatrickNelli Yes, of course. I'm happy to provide some color. So our professional services gross margin is primarily driven by a few factors. One, the near-term professional services discounts that we provided to a portion of our customers that as we mentioned has a GAAP revenue gross margin impact in Q2 of this year, and a smaller GAAP revenue and gross margin impact in Q3 of this year. And then we'll be through those professional services discounts. Another main driver of our professional services gross margin is the mix between a few different professional services revenue streams. There's higher gross margin, data and analytics and improvement services and then there's lower gross margin implementation and outsourced services. The mix between those types of services, we shared earlier this year is the reason why we expected our professional services gross margin this year to be in the 20s. Obviously, the near-term professional services COVID related discounts in Q2 and Q3 or Q2 brought that down to the low 20s. And for the rest of the year we would expect it to increase slightly due to the COVID related discounts rolling off. And the mix would have it be somewhere in the 20s. As far as our long-term professional services gross margin target, it's in the mid 30s and we continue to feel good about those long-term targets. SandyDraper Okay. Great. That's helpful. And then on the technology side, it's actually coming in a little bit better. I may have misunderstood some prior comments. I sort of thought with the Azure hosting et cetera that we weren't really going to see much of any gross margin expansion, and on the technology side and it looks like we're tracking to see some. So maybe just was there anything different there those things are playing out better or maybe I just mis-modeled it. And then thinking about longer term, I know you're still a couple years away but could we actually see margin expansion continue without have -- until you fully get off the having the multiple -- the higher cost of Azure plus the private cloud and all that. PatrickNelli Yes. Sandy thanks for noticing. We've certainly been working hard on our side to provide our technology in as scalable of a way as possible to our customers. That has led to strong technology gross margins over the last couple quarters. We will continue to try to do our best to achieve strong technology gross margins, but I would highlight that their headwind is still ahead of us of continuing to move a handful of customers that are in our private cloud and on-premise to the Microsoft Azure environment. Operator Our next question comes from Elizabeth Anderson with Evercore. Your line is now open. ElizabethAnderson Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. I had a question about the Vitalware acquisition. So in terms of integration can you talk to us a little bit more about how you see the integration in terms of like timeline and then sort of how you then can sort of talk -- what's the timeline for sort of the cross-sell opportunity? Thanks. DanBurton Absolutely. As we think about the approach to integration, our organizational structure helps us to move forward in an expedited fashion, and the fact that we're making these acquisitions at the apps layer, where our apps are designed to work really well with our open scalable flexible data platform; it enables technology and data integration to also be seamless and straightforward. From an organizational perspective, a few years ago we shifted towards a business unit oriented structure, and we have a business that is focused on the value proposition for the CFO; and the financially oriented solutions that we can bring, and this Vitalware acquisition will fit within that business unit function. And really accelerate and strengthen the value proposition that we can offer to CFOs on the revenue and the cost side of the equation. So that's how we're going to approach integration. We've already done a great deal of work in planning that integration from a team member perspective, and we've already also begun the process of thinking about client communication. And the way in which we can enable clients both of Health Catalyst DOS subscription capabilities, as well as Vitalware clients to tap into what is now more broadly available. PatrickNelli And there's one data point on the open adaptable nature of DOS. We closed the Able Health acquisition earlier this year, and just a few months later we were feeding Able Health data and insights from DOS at a customer where we implemented Able Health. So in a very short amount of time, we were able to seamlessly integrate data and insights between those two products. ElizabethAnderson Perfect. That's really helpful. And I know you've spoken in several of the other questions about sort of the post COVID demand and how you're seeing that inflect. Could you also -- are there any changes to sort of the reasons that customers come to you post COVID or would you say it's sort of similar to what you saw pre-COVID? DanBurton So many of the same -- the same reasons still apply. I would say there is a couple of amplified reasons that COVID has highlighted and particularly at the DOS platform layer. I think we've seen an increase in awareness that a patchwork, homegrown data warehouse solution just does not scale in situations like a pandemic response. And the need for a commercial grade data platform that is built on scalable technology, and that can flexibly enable lots of hypotheses to be tested and developed at the apps layer is required. It's not optional anymore. So that's probably the most meaningful shift that I think COVID has highlighted and enabled. But still many of the other use cases prior to COVID still apply as well. Operator Our next question comes from Stephanie Davis with SVB Leerink. Your line is now open. StephanieDavis Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter and thank you for taking my question. So you reinstated 2020 growth guidance but it's effectively in line with your core growth for the year excluding new wins despite calling out some new wins in the first half. So is this because the discounting is off getting the wins? Is there a longer ramp up period, conservatism or something else? What would help me reconcile this? DanBurton Yes. I'll share a few thoughts and then Patrick, please feel free. The guidance that we provided as part of the prepared remarks and the press release. As you I'm sure notices is quite close to the original full-year guidance that we provided before the COVID-19 pandemic, only within a few percentage points from an overall revenue perspective. So the updated guidance post COVID is very close to the overall level. And so we have experience as we mentioned a couple of months impact and delay, and we've spoken to the impact on net new DOS subscription clients and tried to provide some visibility and guidance as to how we would think about that playing out in 2020. And then we've also shared some commentary with regards to existing clients, where we've seen continued robustness as it relates to the technology dollar based net retention. And we've absolutely experienced due to those near-term discounts that we provided to our professional services rates with existing clients and a negative impact as it relates to the professional services dollar based net retention. Those would be the two components that would drive the lowering of the 2020 forecast. But I would also just harken back that it's within just a couple of percentage points of the original revenue guidance. StephanieDavis Put another way, oh, Patrick continue and then I'll keep battering you guys. PatrickNelli The only item I would add is as we think about our revenue streams in the second half of the year, we would continue to believe that our technology revenue stream will be very robust, given that our technology dollar based net retention has been minimally impacted from COVID. We would expect sequential quarter-over- quarter growth in the second half of the year, and primarily the lower second half year-over-year revenue growth is driven by lower professional services year-over-year revenue growth in the second half of the year. StephanieDavis All right. Understood. So I think I know the answer to the follow-up question but it is -- your guidance is close to the original guide, but comes after a very healthy first half feed. So it implies single-digit growth in your fourth quarter. Is that entirely on the professional services side or is anything else rolling off to get you there? PatrickNelli The vast majority of that implied year-over-year lower growth is from lower professional services year-over-year growth. I would just reiterate that our technology revenue stream from a second half perspective, we expect to be very robust and if you think about the reasons why professional services year-over-year revenue growth is lower in the second half of the year; it is a little bit in Q3 the COVID related professional services discounts. It's the lower dollar-based net retention that we spoke about, and it's also lower implementation revenue from signing fewer new DOS subscription customers throughout 2020. Operator Our next question comes from Richard Close with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is now open. RichardClose Great. Thanks. Congratulations on the quarter and the acquisitions. So first on the new DOS just to go back there, I think last quarter you mentioned based on the level of your discussions of people in the pipeline; you thought you maybe -- may have the opportunity to pull forward some deals from 20201 into the fourth quarter. And so I'm curious whether that can occur and is that part of the expectations for the second half DOS new clients? DanBurton Absolutely, Richard. So as we did mention that is a possibility and that could happen. I would reiterate that could happen but our default position would be an expectation that the primary impact that we'll experience is more just a couple months delay. And then our re-engagement that follows the same kind of pattern. So while there could be a case or a couple of cases, where we do experience acceleration. Our default forecast assumption is that really we've just experienced a delay. And that's how we're thinking about it. RichardClose Okay. That's helpful. And then as we think about Vitalware assuming no overlap in the 150 clients would help catalysts base. And then you got Medicity clients that I think you said were in your sweet spot there. I guess the combination gives you 200 more than 200 plus clients to cross-sell. Are we thinking about that correctly? And then what do you think the timeline is to being able to sell DOS into Vitalware and then any update on Medicity success? DanBurton Yes. Thank you for that question, Richard. So we at a strategic level at Health Catalyst believe that a number of the acquisitions that we have pursued have a common characteristic in that they offer us a relationship with a broader number of health system clients. And by virtue of that relationship interesting opportunities, both with our core existing client base to expand within those existing relationships, as well as an open door now to cross-sell other solutions into these clients that we've acquired their solutions to be part of Health Catalyst. So this is not only the case with Vitalware; it's the case with Healthfinch; with Able Health and really an important part of the thesis statement of much of our M&A activity especially at the apps layer in those two categories that we've described where we can make an acquisition that accelerates an existing application suite or we can make an acquisition that brings us into a new application suite still within our core market. And so we do believe that the general thesis of cross-cell is very important. And it's an area of focus for us to execute well against both with Vitalware but with every acquisition that we contemplate. Operator Our next question comes from David Grossman with Stifle. Your line is now open. DavidGrossman Thank you. You've already been asked a lot about pipeline and conversion and you've given us some very helpful data points. But I was just wondering as we look at that fourth quarter run rate, should we be factoring in just the cadence of signings and just the timing of when they're coming on and how that may impact the fourth quarter run rate vis-a-vis what it would be in prior years? And as we think about that professional services business going into next year, is there any reason to believe that if we are returning to a more normalized environment even if it's a new one, that the professional services revenue retention wouldn't return again to a more normalized rate in 2021? DanBurton Yes. I'll comment on the second question and then Patrick, if you want to add anything to that question and address the first question as well. As we think about the professional services business; as Patrick mentioned, there are some near-term impacts related to those COVID discounts that we anticipate go away. We'll see some spill over in Q3 but largely as we think about Q4 and moving forward. As I mentioned before, those conversations have been completed and we've returned to a normal state. So that first factor should go away and we'll be back to a more normal set of variables in Q4 and beyond. The second set of variables; however, will remain with us, and be a dynamic that we believe will play out in multiple ways across a range of outcomes relative to the mix of services. And we try to keep our focus on what we need to do to enable massive measurable improvement at our clients. And sometimes that dictates more of a mix of the higher end, higher gross margin data science and analytics services. And in other cases, it dictates us to shift more of the mix towards the lower end implementation and outsource services. And we allow the mission orientation of the company and the focus on our clients' long-term success to really dictate what that right mix might look like in each period of time. And so when we've talked historically, and I would just restate and re-emphasize the way we think about professional services as a facilitator of measurable improvement. And as such, we would continue to provide a perspective that we may see meaningful changes quarter-to-quarter in terms of the gross margin of professional services mainly driven by mix; all the way from the 20s from a growth margin perspective up to the mid 30s, and you have seen that across these last several quarters as we've been a public company that we've experienced that full range. Patrick? PatrickNelli And on your first question, David, you are thinking about it correct that obviously our fourth quarter GAAP revenue run rate is dependent on the timing of new customer ads throughout the year. On our last earnings call, we shared that in a typical year, our weighting of new client ads is weighted towards Q2 and Q4, approximately 40% of our new client ads occur in Q2, approximately 40% in Q4. And importantly those new client ads are typically at the end of a quarter. So the GAAP revenue benefit of new client ads typically doesn't occur until the following quarter. And that is the case in our guidance as well as in the 2020 new DOS customers that we are expecting that in the second half of the year; the vast majority of revenue contribution from those new customers will not flow onto our income statement until 2021. Operator Our next question from Daniel Grosslight with Citi. Your line is now open. DanielGrosslight Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I'll pile on to the questions around DOS ads this year and next. You mentioned in your prepared remarks or maybe it was an answer to a question that you expect to close a similar amount of clients in the back half of this year versus 2019, which if I kind of apply the cadence that Patrick just mentioned to 2019 would mean probably adding around six or seven new clients in the back half of this year. Am I thinking about that correctly? Does that mean you added around two to three dos clients in the first half of this year? And as we think about DOS clients added in the aggregate over 2020 and 2021, how does that compare to your expectations pre-COVID? DanBurton Absolutely, Daniel. So I think that the framing that you described is a good framing. Last year that in the year 2019, we shared that we added 15 net new DOS subscription clients. So and as Patrick mentioned that's fairly equally weighted typically historically between the first half and the second half. So a reasonable assumption will be somewhere around half of that would have been experienced through the second half of last year. And as we mentioned, we see the pipeline likely playing out similarly this second half as what we experienced last second half. And in the first half as we shared, we were pleased to sign multiple new DOS subscription clients but that number of new DOS subscription clients was meaningfully lower than what we would typically experience. So that's where we get to an overall guide in the high single digits for 2020. And as it relates to 2021, given what we're experiencing now in terms of the pipeline behavior being very consistent with what we have experienced in previous years, we would think about future years in a similar way that we thought about prior years. DanielGrosslight Got it. Okay. And then maybe just a modeling follow-up for you, Patrick. You mentioned that you expect some non headcount expenses to be pushed out to the second half of this year. Can you go into a little more detail on what that is? And what line item that will show up in the income statement? PatrickNelli Of course. So the vast majority of our expenses are associated with headcount, salary, wages, and benefits. But we do have a minority but material portion of our expenses that are associated with non-headcount. This includes third-party consultants, sales and marketing and the like. And those non-headcount expenses generally show up across our various OpEx categories. So you'll see the movement from of some non-headcount expenses from the first half to the second half across all three of those categories. Operator Our next question comes from David Larson with Verity. Your line is now open. DavidLarson Hi. Just one more question on the professional services, sorry about that. With the sequential decline in product service was there any decline in like the number of hours billed or the amount of work done or was it all entirely due to a temporarily reduced price? So when that price comes back up the revenue should sort of normalize. Thanks. DanBurton Yes, absolutely, David. I would characterize the level of work that our team members were performing over the time frame of COVID as being very similar to the level of work and utilization that we normally experience. So really what is showing up from a financial perspective is the impact of those discounts. DavidLarson Okay, so it didn't have anything to do with like being able to access the hospitals themselves because of social distancing or what have you it was simply price which will come back up. Okay and then with the Vitalware acquisition like Chargemaster is obviously of high interest to CFOs but it sounds to me like you're getting deeper or could get deeper into rev cycle; you have denials management, patient access, managed care contracting; there's a whole bunch of different solutions that can add cash to the hospitals from the CFOs perspective, is that the direction that you're moving in which quite, frankly, I think makes a lot of sense. DanBurton We agree with your assessment, David. One of the elements that we found really attractive about the Vitalware acquisition is it does give us a beachhead in an area, where we could acquire a company with a best-in-class product in a category like Chargemaster that is a must have for CFOs, but an area where we could be the industry leader with the best product in this space. And then the opportunity presents itself for us to do more. And this is where we can bring some of that complementary capability especially when you think about our native strengths as a company at integrating data from many different sources and the impact that capability can have in other areas of revenue and revenue cycle coupled with our domain expertise, it felt like having that beachhead of technology capability would open up other use cases, other opportunities for us to be very helpful to a CFO. Operator Our next question comes from Sean Dodge with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is now open. SeanDodge Thank you. Maybe just a quick one on Medicity, has there been anything over the last few months has changed your view there? Is the expectation still for long run, flat to declining revenue or has the pandemic done anything to either help stabilize or accelerate the deterioration you're expecting there? DanBurton We continue to see that integration is proceeding according to our planning and forecasting. The relationships are maintaining in a very similar way to what we had forecasted as well. We do believe that the pandemic at a long-term level highlights the importance of interoperability; the importance of data sharing across organizational boundaries, and so that is a tailwind as it relates to really highlighting the value of those interoperability capabilities, and we certainly want to be in a position long term having embedded those interoperability capabilities into our data platform to offer a very compelling industry leading solution in that regard. So long term, we do see some meaningful tailwinds there. Operator Our next question comes from John Ransom with Raymond James. Your line is now open. JohnRansom Hey. Just kind of stepping back, what do you think your biggest task will be from your customers over the next 6 to 12 months versus say what it was in better times? DanBurton Yes. Thank you for that. What I would share would be that in many ways I feel like we've already had that conversation. And I've personally had that conversation with many C-Suite executives that at many of our clients. And what I would share would be that we tried to be proactive in anticipating what our customers needed both in terms of the solutions that we quickly developed, and as we've shared previously; we have well over a 100 instances of our COVID-19 specific solutions being adopted and implemented across our client base. But also anticipating the financial strain that they were experiencing really in late Q1 and early Q2 and proactively offering up those professional services discounts. As I mentioned my prepared remarks, that decision was very mission consistent, very consistent with this long-term customer focus. And it was very warmly received; it strengthened and reinforced the relationship between us and our clients. And I think it's one of the reasons why we found that we've -- they appreciated that near-term help and they also were ready to move back to the more sustainable pricing for professional services for example that we had pre-COVID-19 and didn't ask for more which we appreciated. And I think I would anticipate given that we're also trying to really deeply understand how each of our clients' financial situations is evolving, and as I mentioned before that that in many cases we are seeing our clients outperforming their adjusted forecasts in terms of how quickly they were able to relaunch those elective procedures. And we tried to help them very specifically with COVID-19 specific elements like I shared in my prepared remarks. And they're ahead of schedule and the recovery has been a better than what we all would have anticipated back in the April time frame or even the early May time frame. As a result, we are seeing a robust pipeline of opportunity both with existing clients and with prospects. And those conversations seem to be progressing at about the same pace that we've seen before. JohnRansom Right. So just to follow up so in the age of zoom and staying at home, I mean you've got this big new cross-sell opportunity, but how do you close that sale when you're just meeting a stranger on an internet connection and you don't have the vital person-to-person contact? Do you think the cross-sell will happen as quickly or are you thinking that this zoom world is temporary, and you'll be back on planes and face-to-face over time? DanBurton Yes, great question. I think one of the benefits that we have first with our existing client base is we have multi-year deep relationships, and often across many functional areas, many C-Suite executive relationships. And so in a situation where you can't get on a plane; you already have really significant meaningful relationships already built. The other piece that is helpful is through these acquisitions, one of the elements that we care a lot about is the strength of the customer relationships that these companies that we consider acquiring have developed and as is the case for example with Vitalware. They were the highest rated product in their space from a customer satisfaction perspective. And so being able to leverage those existing relationships in a situation where you can't travel is really helpful. And the last thing I might share is our delivery model on the pro services side before the pandemic was already almost all remote based. And as a result back to David's question just prior to yours, we really didn't experience any interruption in our ability to provide the services to our clients that other services models might have experienced. And then the last thing I might share is as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, this year's Healthcare Analytics Summit which is our seventh annual summit that we'll be hosting; for the first time will be virtual only, and we will miss that experience of everyone coming to Salt Lake City and having a shared experience together. But there are some upsides as well. So the hotel venue that we typically use has a fire marshal imposed limit to the number of people that can fit in their largest hall, which is typically around that 1,500 level which is -- which was the attendance; it was sold out last year and it typically sells out. We're all already with the virtual health analytics summit well above that register in total, well above 2,000 registrants and so this health catalytic summit will be I think by far the highest attended summit that we've ever had because it's virtual. And so we're trying to make lemonade and understand ways in which we can leverage our capabilities in this new normal environment. And still really meaningfully move forward. Operator Thank you. I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would not like to turn the call back over to CEO, Dan Burton for closing remarks. Dan Burton Thank you. And thank you to all of those who have attended our earnings conference call. We appreciate your interest. We appreciate your support. And we look forward to keeping you apprised of our developments in the future. Take care. Operator Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

News: World Economic Forum
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Insight Report Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN A report by the World Economic Forum's Platform on Shaping the Future of Consumption Prepared in collaboration with Bain & Company June 2020 Contents 4 Preface 5 Executive summary 7 Introduction 7 – The ASEAN macro-context 7 – Four mega-forces will drive the future of consumption in ASEAN 11 Eight consumption themes to 2030, some accelerated due to COVID-19 12 – Consumer spending will double, driven by ASEAN's middle-class boom 13 – Boundaries of premium and value shopping will blur 13 – Digital ubiquity will become the new normal 13 – Technology-enabled platforms will tear down socio-economic walls 15 – Local and regional competitive winds will prevail 15 – Shoppers will move beyond omni-channel to expect retail omni-presence 17 – Convenience will be the new currency 17 – Health of people and the planet will be nonnegotiable 19 Business capabilities required for the firm of the future 19 – Reset vision, mission and goals 19 – Realign offerings to the new ASEAN consumer 19 – Reframe consumer engagement 20 – Restructure route-to-market and win at point of sale 21 – Rethink supply chains as a priority 21 – Reimagine operating model and talent 23 – Re-envision the role of sustainability 24 Critical societal challenges and calls to action World Economic Forum 91-93 route de la Capite CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva Switzerland Tel.: +41 (0)22 869 1212 Fax: +41 (0)22 786 2744 Email: contact@weforum.org www.weforum.org © 2020 World Economic Forum. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system. 2 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 24 – Create trade and investor-friendly reforms 24 – Invest in socio-economic inclusion 26 – Upgrade infrastructure for a connected and sustainable future 27 Conclusion 28 Appendix 30 Key contributors 31 Endnotes Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 3 Preface As this report is being published, the world is going through unprecedented times. COVID-19, a term that did not exist when this study was being undertaken over 2019, is now ubiquitous, even though the scale and nature of its global impact will not be known for months to come. As of the second quarter of 2020, a third of the global population has been under a lockdown, with over 200 countries affected by health and economic burdens in diverse ways. Businesses, governments and citizens across the world want to leave the humanitarian and economic crisis behind as soon as possible. To successfully navigate through the COVID crisis and a post-COVID world, a premium will be placed on innovation, the willingness of organizations to disrupt themselves, and active collaboration. Jeremy Jurgens, Managing Director, Head of Centre for Global Industries and Strategic Intelligence, World Economic Forum Zara Ingilizian, Head of Consumer Industries and Platform for Shaping the Future of Consumption, World Economic Forum In the context of this seismic change, the World Economic Forum Platform for Shaping the Future of Consumption aims to accelerate the responsible transformation of the consumption landscape by enabling consumer well-being, environmental sustainability, inclusive growth models, and trust and transparency among all stakeholders. The mission and transformation goals of the Future of Consumption platform developed three years ago are now more relevant than ever to ensure positive benefits for business and society, across developed and emerging markets. It is an imperative that we advance progress with speed to build a prosperous future for all. In a post-COVID era over the next decade, accelerated shifts in global forces, more than 1 billion first-time consumers and the Fourth Industrial Revolution will continue to change the landscape of consumption in the fast-growth consumer markets of China, India and the ASEAN region. Both business and political leaders will be required to adapt their strategies to the changing needs and demands of connected and empowered consumers. The Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets, a multi-year project, has focused on the evolution of consumption in emerging markets that comprise more than 40% of the world's population. Critical foresights on drivers of growth and levers of inclusivity can benefit global leaders as they grapple with similar issues. The 2017 study focused on China; in 2018, the focus was on India; the 2019-2020 study is the final, concentrating on ASEAN. The 10 ASEAN economies are among the fastest growing in the world. Countries within ASEAN are in themselves diverse, with economic, political and cultural nuances. Over the next years, the confluence of favorable demographics, rising income levels, geopolitical shifts and digital inter-connectedness will create tremendous opportunities in the region to advance inclusive and responsible consumption for decades to come. Developed in collaboration with Bain & Company, this report builds on in-depth consumer surveys conducted across over 1,740 households in 22 cities and towns in ASEAN, covering all key demographic segments. It also draws from over 35 in-depth interviews with private and public-sector leaders. This research leads to rich insights on ASEAN's present and future outlook on consumption. The report highlights the most significant implications for businesses that aim to thrive in the ASEAN economies over the next decade. It also lays out a call to action for all stakeholders in ASEAN's growth to build an inclusive future for the region in a post-COVID world. The project team of the World Economic Forum would like to extend its appreciation and gratitude to all parties who played a key role in developing this Insight Report: the Bain & Company team led by Praneeth Yendamuri and all participants who contributed via our meetings and interviews. We are confident that our collective effort will contribute to realizing a prosperous future, with sustainable benefits for both business and society. 4 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN Executive Summary In the bustling cities of Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Manila, green-helmeted motorbike taxi drivers whizz past warung or sari-sari stores. The presence of homegrown technology decacorns – new businesses like Go-Jek or Grab worth more than $10 billion – alongside thriving traditional mom-and-pop stores best illustrates SouthEast Asia's vibrant growth story. As a market bloc, the 10 member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are on the cusp of a tremendous leap forward in socio-economic progress, but on their own terms. ASEAN will not simply be the next China or India. The economic and cultural backgrounds of each ASEAN market are heterogeneous, and while the region will see abundant opportunities, each country will take its own distinct path to growth. ASEAN is the world's third most populous economy and over the next decade is expected to become the world's fourth largest. Domestic consumption, which powers roughly 60% of gross domestic product (GDP) today, is estimated to double to $4 trillion. Yet, as this growth story plays out, public and private-sector organizations will first need to address the immediate COVID-led health and humanitarian crisis and its implications, while finding longerterm solutions to structural problems of income inequality, ease of doing business, sustainability and job creation. It would be an understatement to describe 2020 as a challenging year. Like their counterparts around the world, government and business leaders in ASEAN face uncertainty as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts economic activities and causes drastic changes in consumer behavior. As a sign of the huge impact, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) adjusted South-East Asian1 growth projections down to 1% for 2020, although annual growth is expected to rebound to 5% in 2021, supported by positive macroeconomic fundamentals.2 As we look further into the future, ASEAN growth will be propelled by four mega-forces: favorable demographics; rising income levels; geopolitical shifts; and digital tailwinds. Over the next decade, ASEAN will see 140 million new consumers, representing 16% of the world's consumers – many of whom will make their first online purchase and buy their first luxury product. Income levels are rising, with regional GDP per capita expected to grow by an annual 4% (similar to the US) to $6,600 in 2030,3 causing many product categories to reach inflection points where consumption takes off. ASEAN will be a popular destination for foreign investment as multinationals rebalance supply chains to diversify geopolitical risk and make the most of the region's low-cost labour. Rapid digital adoption in ASEAN will continue, spurred by digital native consumers, investor funding in technological innovations and government programs to support digital transformation. By 2030, there will be nearly 575 million internet users in the region, and digital will be ubiquitous in the daily consumption journey. As digital reaches the rural and low-income communities, it will remove barriers that inhibit small business growth and enable delivery of basic services such as healthcare, education and financial services. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgency in providing under-served communities with digital access for obtaining health-related information and ordering essentials. It also has created a shift in government focus. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 5 For example, two weeks after launching a program to reskill recent graduates and the unemployed, Indonesia's government shifted the focus to aiding workers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. There will be eight major consumption themes in ASEAN in 2030, such as the doubling of consumption and the blurring of the boundaries between premium and value shopping. Some of these themes will be accelerated by COVID-19, including digital adoption and shifting retail channels. As the consumption landscape evolves over the next decade, public and private-sector leaders will face numerous opportunities and challenges. To unlock the region's full potential, stakeholders need to get a few things right: 1. Ensure efficient and effective recovery from COVID-19: On the health front, being vigilant with testing, effective prevention (including vaccination, when available) and treatment (including capability building for future pandemics). On the economic front, helping small businesses struggling to get back on their feet and providing stimulus and support to restart the devastated economy. 2. Focus on talent development and socio-economic inclusion: The next decade in ASEAN will see 40 million people reach working age, with digitalization disrupting the nature and number of jobs. An estimated 65% of children entering primary school today will end up doing a job that does not exist today.4 The COVID-19 pandemic will expedite the switch to automated services. It will be critical to create new jobs, reduce the skills gap, and provide access to education, healthcare and nutrition to ensure a competitive and healthy future workforce. 3. Upgrade infrastructure to support urbanization and resource management: Rapidly growing demand is pressuring ASEAN resources. Urban consumers struggle with heavy traffic, a lack of affordable housing and low security, while rural communities deal with poor 6 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN logistics networks and connectivity. As sustainability concerns grow, ASEAN will also need to find alternative energy sources to coal and oil. Stakeholders will need to invest in hard and soft infrastructure and develop efficient resource-management capabilities. One of the biggest sustainability issues facing ASEAN involves the huge accumulation of plastic waste. The region is the world's largest producer of mismanaged plastic waste, generating a staggering 30 times more than the US. For example, Singapore recycled only 4% of its plastic waste in 2018. As economies recover from the COVID-19 crisis, governments and businesses are likely to prioritize economic goals and the health and well-being of their citizens and employees over the environment. However, the recovery opens up the opportunity for creating a new vision for economic growth, one that considers the environmental consequences of every corporate and government action. 4. Push for open and integrated regulation, with a hyper-local approach: The region stands to gain from a more interconnected ASEAN with improved intraregional flows of goods and services, investments, knowledge and human capital. However, stakeholders must bear in mind that there is no "single ASEAN". Macro and consumption themes will play out differently in each market, with product and policy localization a powerful differentiator. Achieving ASEAN's full potential growth in 2030 requires that all stakeholders deeply understand each market, build strong public-private partnerships and strike a hard balance between technology advancement and job creation, economic development and sustainability, as well as scale advantages and concentration of power. Businesses and governments have a unique opportunity to shape ASEAN's exciting growth story if they thoughtfully steer the region towards inclusive and sustainable consumption while also navigating the turbulence of the next decade. Introduction The ASEAN macro-context The world's next economic powerhouse. With a GDP growth rate that is third only to India and China, ASEAN is expected to grow by an annual 4% over the next decade, making this region the world's fourth-largest economy. By 2030, ASEAN's GDP will stretch to $4.5 trillion and the population will reach 723 million. One in six households entering the world's consuming class will come from ASEAN. Five million people will move into cities every year. Urbanization will sustain through 2050 and extend to Tier 2 cities. As these developments suggest, the dynamic ASEAN states are on the verge of becoming a massive consumer opportunity close behind China and India (see the World Economic Forum reports, Future of Consumption in FastGrowth Consumer Markets: China, 2018 and India, 2019). However, while the region's huge population and powerful economic momentum offer great potential, there are a host of complicating factors. Among the fundamental issues are the absence of a common currency, no open borders and, despite many recent ASEAN trade advances, each country maintains separate regulations. Understanding the basics: ASEAN's three economic groups. The 10 member states represent a wide disparity in the levels and speed of development; it is thus best to view them in three groups. At one end of the spectrum are the three developed nations: Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand. Singapore is the region's most developed economy, with a GDP per capita similar to the US. The Singaporean population is fully or almost fully urbanized, banked and online; the country ranks second of 190 countries for ease of doing business and is one of the least corrupt in the world.5 On the other end of the spectrum are the four frontier economies of Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Brunei. The first three countries have massive prospects for growth but significantly smaller economies, with GDP levels below $100 billion and GDP per capita below the ASEAN average of $4,747. They have the same dominant religion – Buddhism – but differences remain. For example, 76% of Cambodians use the internet, roughly double that of Myanmar and Laos.6 While Brunei has a high GDP per capita fuelled by the national oil and gas industry, the sultanate resembles an emerging market socio-economically. In a frontier nation like Myanmar, only 31% of the population live in urban areas, 26% have a bank account and 38% use the internet. The country ranks 165th and 132nd in ease of doing business and corruption respectively. In the middle lie the three emerging economies of Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam. This is where 70% of the ASEAN population lives, contributing to more than 50% of the region's GDP. Emerging ASEAN will be the engine of growth over the next decade, driving 98% of the increase in working population and contributing 70% to 80% of the new consumer population. This explosion of the working middle-class will materially boost productivity and spending to the point that the GDP growth rate of emerging ASEAN is expected to overtake China (see Figure 4 in Appendix). These fast-growth consumer markets will be the focus in this study. In addition to being heterogeneous, geography poses challenges to growth in many ASEAN markets. The Indonesian and Filipino populations are spread across 17,500 and 7,100 islands, respectively, making distribution a major obstacle in industries as diverse as communications, financial services and consumer products. Four mega-forces will drive the future of consumption in ASEAN Despite the market differences and geographic challenges, ASEAN is a tremendous consumer opportunity, with four mega-forces determining the pace and scale of the region's growth (Figure 1). 1. Favorable demographics A young, tech-savvy population, entering the workforce and migrating to big and small cities, will spur consumption in Indonesia, Viet Nam and the Philippines. Emerging ASEAN is young and increasingly urbanized. In 2030, the median age in the Philippines will be 29 while Indonesia's will be 32. Young consumers are tech-savvy, likely to discover products on social media, comfortable spending online and concerned about health and sustainability. ASEAN's working-age population will increase by 40 million by 2030, with Indonesia contributing more than half of that army of workers. By comparison, China is expected to reduce its working-age population by 30 million in the same period. Labour costs in emerging ASEAN are significantly lower than in many other parts of Asia. Consider that Viet Nam's labour costs are 50% that of China. Moreover, there is headroom to increase productivity. Annual productivity in Viet Nam is $4,000 per employee compared to $128,000 in the US and $95,000 in Singapore.7 The combination of an expanding workforce, low labour costs and the potential for productivity gains is highly attractive for investment and growth. Meanwhile, ASEAN populations will continue to migrate to cities at a sustained pace. Through 2050, an estimated Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 7 Figure 1: Four mega-forces will drive the future of consumption in ASEAN Riseofof Rise e-commerce e-commerce Investorfunding funding Government Investor Government accelerating initiativesdriving driving accelerating initiatives innovation adoption innovation adoption Force4:4:Digital Digitaltailwinds tailwinds Force Globaland andregional regional Global geopolitics geopolitics Interrelationships Interrelationships betweenlayers layers between Regulatoryand andpolicy policy Regulatory environment environment Force3:3:Geopolitical Geopoliticalshifts shifts Force Sustained Sustained urbanizationand and urbanization growthofofTier Tier22cities cities growth Consumption Consumption increaseand andchange change increase composition inincomposition Working-age Working-age majority majority Force1:1:Favourable Favourabledemographics demographics Force Middle-and andhighhighMiddlesegmentexpansion expansion segment Force2:2:Rising Risingincome incomelevels levels Force ASEANcontext context ASEAN 5 million people a year will move to urban areas, with the growth extending beyond Tier-1 cities like Jakarta, Manila and Ho Chi Minh City to Tier-2 cities like Surabaya, Pampanga and Can Tho. In contrast, the rate of urbanization in China is decelerating, with fewer people moving to urban areas by 2040 compared to ASEAN.8 Other demographic factors also come into play. For example, decreasing household size and increasing female workforce participation will further shape consumer behavior by contributing to an increase in purchasing frequency and boosting demand for convenience. 2. Rising income levels Income levels will grow annually by 6%-8% in emerging ASEAN, creating economies powered by the middle class. The highest increase in income will happen in Viet Nam. There, the average disposable income per capita will rise from $2,000 to $4,000 by 2030, growing at an annual rate of 8%. That is twice the rate of the US. By comparison, Indonesia's incomes will grow from $3,000 to $8,000 and the Philippines' from $3,000 to $6,000 by 2030. By 2030, ASEAN will contribute 140 million new consumers, representing 16% of the world's new consumer class (Figure 2). Many of these new consumers will be making their first online purchase and buying their first affordable luxury good. Further fuelling consumption will be a substantial expansion in the number of emerging ASEAN's high- and upper-middle income households, which will nearly double from 30 million to 57 million from 2019 to 2030. Overall, GDP per capita across ASEAN will grow by 4% annually to reach $6,600 in 2030. As a result, product 8 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN categories as diverse as confectionery and diapers will soon approach inflection points where consumption takes off. 3. Shifts in global geopolitics and local regulations Geopolitics and local regulations can be a boon or a bane. They will open the door for foreign direct investments and other opportunities while also creating challenges such as rising protectionism. ASEAN will become a popular destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) as multinationals rebalance supply chains to diversify geopolitical risk and make the most of low-cost labour. In 2018, FDI inflows reached $155 billion, exceeding China by 1.2 times and India by 3.7 times. With a labour force that is 50% cheaper than China, Viet Nam is well-placed to benefit. To ensure that it can accommodate the growth, Viet Nam needs to continue to invest to develop skilled and semi-skilled labour and build a stronger technological manufacturing base. However, geopolitics could also be a challenge for ASEAN markets. For example, the European Union's ban on the use of palm oil to produce biofuels has had a negative effect on ASEAN palm-oil producers. Another big question mark involves regulatory challenges. Protectionist measures make it difficult for foreign companies to operate in places like the Philippines. Such regulations led the country's Ease of Doing Business rank to fall from 95 to 124 (from 2015 to 2019). However, regulations are now beginning to shift in favor of commerce. In 2019, Indonesia removed a regulation requiring 80% of modern trade sales to come from domestic products and the anti-corruption commission has been actively cracking down on corruption. Viet Nam drafted a law to remove the 49% foreign ownership limit on listed companies.9 4. Digital tailwinds ASEAN's digital economy will become truly inclusive, as consumers adopt digital, investors fund innovative digital businesses and governments support key digital transformation programs. Digital tailwinds that propelled development in much of the rest of the world will be felt across this region. Digital adoption is reaching an inflection point, fueled by consumer behavioral changes, investor funding in digital innovations as well as government programs to accelerate the digital transformation process (see Figure 5 in Appendix). Yet digitalization will come at a cost. While entirely new jobs will be created, automation will reduce employment in labour-intensive sectors, reducing wages and displacing low-skilled jobs. ADB estimates that up to 30% of activities in 60% of occupations could be automated. By comparison, high-skilled jobs will be in demand and at least 43 million people will need to be reskilled in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam (collectively, "ASEAN-6") by 2030. Figure 2: Household income profiles will change across developed and emerging ASEAN Intra-ASEAN: Divergence and convergence points of growth drivers ASEAN markets are heterogeneous and held together with a centrality of political common sense. They reflect varying stages of economic, political and regulatory maturity, and openness to foreign investment. Moreover, there is diversity in languages, historical influences, cultural norms, local tastes – all requiring businesses to tailor approaches and offerings, while adding complexity in building regional businesses. FinTech will drive growth. Indonesia will benefit from a large domestic consumer class with rising disposable income levels and growth in Tier-2 cities. Growth in the Philippines will continue to be supported by overseas remittances and services industries, and further boosted by investment in manufacturing and public infrastructure industries. Viet Nam's growth will accelerate from exports, with an emerging focus on e-commerce, EdTech and modern agribusiness. The frontier markets of Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos will embark on their path to economic prosperity supported by opportunistic investments from North-East Asia (see Figure 6 in Appendix). While the four mega-forces will affect the entire region, there is no "single ASEAN". Growth drivers will play out differently based on demographics and other macro factors. For example, while Singapore's population is ageing, rising wages and a shift to high value-added services such as Unlocking growth will require a tailored strategy that considers each market's unique qualities and preferences, with products and formulations adapted to each country. ASEAN member states may share many commonalities, but each market will evolve differently. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 9 To understand consumption trends and their evolution over the next decade, proprietary consumer research by Bain focused on Indonesia, the largest nation and consumer opportunity in the region. Indonesia represents roughly 40% of ASEAN GDP and population today. Based on primary and secondary research on the macro-context and growth drivers, six major consumer archetypes have emerged (Figure 3). These archetypes represent, to varying degrees, the consumption patterns and sets of preferences that apply across all ASEAN countries. Figure 3: Six major archetypes will define consumption behavior in Indonesia Urban success Bayu and Putri Emerging middle class Reza Young and striving Ahmad Rural senior citizen Budi Urban homemaker Indah Rural homemaker Dewi 10 Consumption Trend today towards 2030 Profile Lifestyle Preferences 40-year-olds, both working at large professional services firms in Jakarta Bayu and Putri are married with two children. They live in a semi-detached house, dine out often and take vacations twice a year. Highest estimated spend of $7,000 a year per capita. Omni-channel, open to global brands, highest preference for healthy and sustainable products 33% 30-year-old mechanic who moved to a Tier-2 city for better job opportunities Reza is married with two children. He works hard to provide an enjoyable life for his family and ensure his children get a better education than he did. Buys local brands, holds traditional values, low awareness of sustainability 26% High school student who has moved to a Tier-1 city for better education Ahmad usually eats at home or at the canteen and spends his time smoking, hanging out with friends, or playing games on his mobile. Spends the most time on mobile; open to new technologies and consumption models; prefers local brands 14% 53-year-old part-time worker who has lived in Maros, South Sulawesi, for most of his life In his younger days, Budi worked in a mining site. Now, he is an odd-job man and mostly buys day-to-day necessities like groceries and petrol. Lowest spend of $3,500 a year Highest preference for traditional values, lowest rate of mobile use and access 11% 38-year-old, middle-income stay-at-home mother in Bandung (Tier-1) Indah manages the household purchases from food to energy bills. She enjoys indulging in beauty and personal-care products. Highly influenced by TV; enjoys access to mobile data and prefers local brands; open to new technologies and consumption models 10% 33-year-old, low-income stay-at-home mother in Deli Serdang (regency) Dewi operates a warung that sells grocery items while her husband works in the field. She spends mostly on household necessities and personal-care products. Influenced by TV; prefers local brands, traditional values; less open to new models; less concerned about sustainability than her urban counterpart 6% Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN Eight consumption themes to 2030, some accelerated due to COVID-19 These four mega-forces will deliver a new ASEAN consumption picture, with confident, informed and explorative millennial and Gen Z consumers shaping future consumption trends and behavior. They will leapfrog consumers in many larger economies in digital adoption. They will strive to be modern while preserving local identity. Millennials and Gen Z consumers will demand convenience, well-being and sustainability, and seek value for money as well as integrative experiences across channels. 1. C onsumer spending will double, driven by ASEAN's middle-class boom 5. L ocal and regional competitive winds will prevail 2. B oundaries of premium and value shopping will blur 6. S hoppers will move beyond omni-channel to expect retail omni-presence 3. D igital ubiquity will become the new normal 4. T echnology-enabled platforms will tear down socio-economic walls Eight consumption themes will have major implications for both business and society in ASEAN, which will need to develop new capabilities as detailed in subsequent sections 7. Convenience will be the new currency 8. H ealth of people and the planet will be nonnegotiable Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 11 1. C onsumer spending will double, driven by ASEAN's middle-class boom As the middle-class population expands to include 70% of the ASEAN population by 2030, total consumption will double across the region, with the Philippines experiencing the highest consumption growth. Pan-ASEAN, grocery retailing will remain the largest beneficiary. ASEAN's middle-class is exploding to the point that it will include 67%10 of the region's total population by 2030. In Indonesia, the largest consumer opportunity in ASEAN, roughly 75% of the population will be middle-class, contributing to 72% of all spending in the country. Highincome household spending will also grow in Indonesia, from 9% to 25% of overall consumption. Across ASEAN, roughly 1 million households could rise above the poverty threshold of $1,000 in annual household income11. ASEAN's booming middle-class will result in three major implications: – Total consumption will double ASEAN consumption will grow by 2.2 times to nearly $4 trillion by 2030, compared to China at 1.9 times and India at four times12. Indonesia's projected $1.3 trillion will represent one-third of ASEAN's consumption, making it the region's largest consumption opportunity. – The food and beverage (F&B) category will be the biggest beneficiary: ASEAN consumers will continue to spend more in F&B than in any other product categories. By 2030, F&B spending will represent 30% of ASEAN consumption – up to 40% in the Philippines and Viet Nam.13 12 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN – Look for growth in electronics, education and transport: Other sectors expected to experience highspeed growth at 7%-8% annually include consumer electronics, education and mobility options. How COVID-19 changes category shopping behavior The COVID-19 outbreak launched a health and economic crisis in early 2020, with major implications for the post-pandemic world. In South East Asia , GDP growth for 2020 has been adjusted downwards to 1% (ADB, April 2020), from 5% (December 2019). The pandemic has affected key sectors such as travel and retail, disrupted supply chains and weakened business and consumer confidence.14 Certain categories will be more severely impacted than others, based on five factors: location; relevance for home; accessibility from home; occasions at home; and health and well-being benefits. Certain "disasterpreparedness" categories and daily essentials will see a temporary spike, while categories such as out-of-home food and beverages and luggage or travel accessories will likely see a large dip and a long recovery runway. Consumer behavior will also change in non-reversible ways. For categories such as healthy snacks, food delivery and hand sanitizers, higher demand is likely to continue beyond the outbreak, even post-recovery. Assuming the pandemic is contained within the year, the region is projected to return to 5% growth in 2021. 2. Boundaries of premium and value shopping will blur As consumers rise up the income ladder, spending on special treats and first luxury products will take off. Consumers will be willing to pay a premium for convenience, well-being and personalization. However, with 62% of high-income consumers still rating price as one of their top purchasing criteria, consumers will also remain value-conscious. Consumers are simultaneously moving in two directions – embracing premium goods while retaining their preference for value. Consumers across income bands define value differently, and a household's approach to spending typically changes as it moves up the income ladder. This is apparent across three levels of product hierarchy: basic products; special treats; and first luxury products. Basic products include such necessities as groceries, transport and personal care. Based on Bain's survey of Indonesia's consumers, high-income consumers typically spend two times more than low-income consumers on these products. In 2030, basic products will represent around 80% of consumption. Special treats such as dining out, entertainment and travel will make up roughly 15% of consumption in 2030. Luxury purchases will represent 5% of total consumption in 2030 (see Figure 7 in Appendix). As more consumers begin to explore premium purchases, business will be required to realign product portfolios better to serve the evolving needs of first-time consumers. There will be two critical imperatives for business: – Personalization as a key part of the consumer experience: Insurgent brands are aggressively delivering on real-time personalization. For example, fashion retailer Love, Bonito launched a "Book-a-stylist" service15 in which fashion consultants, or "Style Ambassadors", provide one-on-one assistance. Another example is mobility and food-delivery company Grab. Shoppers opening the Grab app to order food see a customized landing page, with recommendations based on previously searched or ordered items. In the years ahead, a growing majority of ASEAN's middle-class consumers will be willing to pay a premium for personalized experiences: 74% of respondents indicated they prefer experiences to material possessions, while 56% of respondents indicated they prefer lifestyles that embody their own style. – Products and services offering value for money: Even as ASEAN shoppers shift towards premium purchases, they continue to be value-conscious. When asked to rank the top three things they care about while purchasing across a range of categories, more than 60% of uppermiddle and high-income respondents still rate price as a top purchase criterion. That group swells to 80%-95% for consumers of niche categories such as baby care. In developed ASEAN, grocery discount retailers should grow by an annual 41% over the next five years.16 In comparison, traditional and modern trade retailers are projected to grow at a relatively modest 3%-5%.17 3. D igital ubiquity will become the new normal Millennials and Gen Z will account for 75% of ASEAN consumers, spending seven to eight hours on the internet each day across devices, with four to five hours on social media. The unprecedented abundance of information and choice will boost repertoire behavior – 65% would switch brands if their favorites were not available – enabling growth of insurgent brands, which are able to innovate more rapidly. By 2030, about 575 million people, or roughly 80% of the ASEAN population, will be online. In Indonesia, the number of internet users should rise to 262 million, with internet penetration reaching 92% in urban areas and 82% among the rural population. Today, ASEAN consumers spend up to 1.2 times more time online than the global average.18 That amount of time will rise further as their digital lives expand dramatically with such advances as smart homes, telehealth and social commerce. As digital ubiquity takes root, two big areas for consideration emerge: – Tapping into millennials and Gen Z, the biggest segments for digital consumption: Digitally native and connected millennials (1981-1995) and Generation Z (1996-2012) will be the driving force for digital consumption. Combined, they will account for 75% of ASEAN consumers and 70% of Indonesian consumers in 2030. The behavior patterns of these younger consumers provide a glimpse into the future. While they still rely on traditional sources of information such as friends and family, television and trends in nearby big cities, digital sources hold much greater influence. For Gen Z and millennial survey respondents, social media ranks second and third as a source of information. For Gen X and older, it ranks ninth. Gen Z also clocks up to two times more mobile screen time than older generations and spends three to seven times more hours on gaming activities. – The abundance of choice will accentuate repertoire shopping behavior. Digital ubiquity comes with a caution for brands. The widespread access to information, abundance of choice and propensity to search online will contribute to an increase in repertoire behavior – a desire and ability to switch brands easily. Fully 90% of digital consumers surveyed searched online for a product or service to buy.19 Across six types of grocery and personal care products, 65% of consumers, on average, say they would switch brands if their favorites were unavailable. 4. T echnology-enabled platforms will tear down socio-economic walls As ASEAN consumers leapfrog in digital adoption, it will enable the underserved to access basic services such as healthcare, education and financial services. Mobile banking penetration is expected to reach levels 1.3 times that of the US. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 13 Technology will accelerate three big shifts: a disintermediation of old hierarchies and world orders, homogenization of young and urban consumer, and serving of the underserved. Widespread social media has upended traditional hierarchies by dissolving the control of mass communication and creating a platform for equal access of voice, opportunity and information. Also, millennials and Gen Z are consuming similar information and connecting with global communities online. This will empower large, digitally native consumer category leaders across the region that focus on young consumers as well as a global, "instant culture" where young people connect quickly with a trend or an identity and then move on just as quickly. Finally, digital will lower the cost to reach, acquire and serve rural and lowerincome populations, often with new consumption models such as subscription-based or sharing economies. Technology will open four major opportunities to enable new models of consumption. – Leapfrogging to e-wallets will help underserved consumers: Alternative digital payment methods lower entry requirements and provide access to the previously unserved. In modern-day Indonesia, 65% of the population lack basic bank accounts and 87% have not borrowed or used credit cards in the past year. There are four main obstacles: high income requirements; high monthly account administration fees; a scarcity of physical bank branches in rural areas; and low levels of financial literacy. About 61% of survey respondents say they lack the knowledge to use financial products. In comparison, digital banks and mobile wallets typically require neither minimum income levels nor a credit history. These FinTech companies assess credit risk through consumer behavior data. Their agent networks also extend credit to rural communities and connect to traditional businesses. As a result, e-wallets are expected to grow 14 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 9% annually through 2030 compared with an estimated 2% growth for traditional bank accounts in Indonesia. Urbanized rural consumers will leapfrog to e-wallets at three times the current adoption rate by 2030. That pace is being set by innovative players such as Jenius and Digibank (in digital banking), GoPay and Ovo (in mobile wallets), and Kredivo and Akulaku (in credit). – Acceleration of e-health: Digital healthcare platforms provide quick and affordable access to congested and rural areas. Telemedicine services include teleconsultation with a network of doctors through video, voice calls and chats, access to pharmacies to order medicine, as well as other online health and wellness services. For example, Halodoc has gained strong traction in Indonesia, with roughly 2 million users, a network of 20,000 doctors and 1,000 pharmacies. In the Philippines and Viet Nam, players such as Kitika and Doctor Anywhere offer similar services. – Penetration of online education platforms: Online education platforms provide greater access to local and global universities. IndonesiaX is an online education platform that collaborates with local universities and the Indonesia Stock Exchange to offer free online courses. Students may obtain a certificate by passing a test and paying a nominal administration fee. In the Philippines and Viet Nam, similarly affordable and accredited online education programs are offered through institutions like AMA University and Topica. – Emerging business models including subscriptions, renting and sharing: With Gen Z and millennials becoming the leading consumer class, businesses will need to embrace new consumption patterns and provide a wider and more flexible set of options. In addition to serving these consumer segments, renting and sharing models will also allow businesses to pursue a more sustainable supply chain. Founded in 2016, Style Theory's subscription-based clothing rental service gained more than 20,000 active users in Jakarta in its first year. iFlix, a Malaysia-based video on-demand service with a focus on local content, offers a monthly subscription at a third the price of Netflix. It has formed a partnership with Telco PT Telkom to broaden its distribution and marketing network while appealing to a local market. Similarly, Spotify works with leading telecoms to allow consumers to pay for the music service with phone credits. It also offers an array of alternative services such as weekly packages for budget consumers and Spotify Lite for rural areas. 5. L ocal and regional competitive winds will prevail Competitors for consumers will come from multiple fronts, including Asian brands favored by ASEAN consumers, insurgents, and "frenemies" who are companies' strategic partners but also potential competitors. Perception of being local will be increasingly critical as local brands capture share from multinationals in emerging ASEAN. In the ASEAN market, competitors of the future will fall under five broad categories: – Local or regional scale players with ASEAN as their primary battlefield – Multinationals that treat ASEAN as a must-win market – Asian brands favored by ASEAN consumers – Disruptive new competitors or insurgent brands – "Frenemies" – strategic partners and potential competitors at the same time (such as e-commerce marketplaces) Two consumption mega-trends are emerging. Local and regional brands are outgrowing global players while consumers prefer Eastern brands and identities. The competitive scenario and these consumption mega-trends result in two key implications for companies selling to ASEAN consumers: – Creating a perception of being local will be critical to appeal to ASEAN consumers: In Indonesia, 60% of urban affluent consumers and 80% of rural, older consumers prefer local brands to global brands. This is especially true in F&B categories. The preference is slightly more nuanced in categories like personal care. For example in Indonesia, the top brand Rinso is global (Unilever), but the next most popular brands are local: So Klin and Daia. This preference will fuel growth for local companies, which have been steadily winning share from multinationals. Across emerging ASEAN, local brands are expected to outperform multinationals in annual growth rates by 1%-3% across a range of categories, from packaged food to home care. Localization – or the perception of being local – will be increasingly critical to appeal to ASEAN consumers. Overall, local companies have outperformed multinationals by 9% annually over the past five years in the hot drinks sub-category. Meanwhile, Indonesian donut brand J.Co outperforms Dunkin' Donuts and Krispy Kreme by tailoring its products to local tastes and preferences. – Exploring opportunities for partnership with Eastern, culture-specific and insurgent brands: In specific categories, brands from South Korea, Japan and China are also growing in influence at the expense of Western brands. Beauty trends from Japan and South Korea (J and K-beauty, respectively) are driving beauty and skincare sales. Sephora Indonesia's website has a dedicated K-pop beauty banner, while Duty Free Philippines introduced K-beauty and cosmetics products in 2019 to target the growing market in the Philippines. In Indonesia, Korea's Sulhwasoo and Japan's Shiseido are capturing share in premium skincare from the US and France. In Viet Nam, the leading beauty and personalcare importers are Korean and Japanese –capturing 22% and 13% of the market respectively.20 Chinese companies lead in smartphones, taking the bulk of market share, from 57% in the Philippines to 74% in Indonesia in the third quarter of 2019. Within Indonesia and Malaysia, Islamic branding is taking off, raising the potential for the region to become the global centre of Muslim brands. Brands such as Wardah have gained significant traction in the market by offering Muslim products. Wardah appeals to young Indonesian women through halal-compliant cosmetics. It grew 20%-50% in annual sales to capture roughly 30% of the domestic cosmetic market share by 2018.21 To capitalize on such preferences, Western companies may need to explore creative partnerships with Eastern and innovative brands. 6. S hoppers will move beyond omnichannel to expect retail omnipresence Omni-channel retailing will prevail across ASEAN in 2030. While e-commerce will grow the fastest, reaching 13% penetration from 3% today, offline channels will remain large and relevant. Consumers will switch between online and offline throughout their consumption journey. As a result, social media, e-commerce, everyday apps and offline channels will converge into an integrated platform. The ASEAN retail landscape in 2030 will remain highly diverse and fragmented, with small-format retail such as traditional trade and convenience stores capturing 40% to 50% of sales. E-commerce will be the fastest growing channel. It will grow 21% annually, with penetration expanding from 3% to 13%, approaching the current US penetration rate. Entertainment, consumer electronics and apparel will achieve the highest levels of online penetration, with grocery and apparel expected to grow the fastest. Non-retail online spending, including such areas as digital financial services is expected to grow from 6% to 16% in Indonesia.22 Overall, online spending should grow 18% annually, three times faster than offline spending. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 15 stores directly to manufacturers and provide digital POS and Wi-Fi connectivity. – Channel roles will be blurred as consumers switch between online and offline: Today, 80% of shoppers compare prices online,23 yet 90% still purchase offline. ASEAN shoppers go online to compare prices, save time and make purchases around the clock. They prefer physical stores to be able to touch and feel a product, validate its authenticity, as well as for the shopping experience.24 A typical consumer journey begins in discovery, when consumers gain awareness of a brand through advertisements before considering the purchase by comparing prices or searching for reviews. The second phase is the transaction – making the purchase and potentially recommending or giving feedback on the product. Today, there is a clear distinction between discovery and transaction channels. Consumers look to a range of media for information and entertainment, but they turn to e-commerce platforms or retail stores to transact. In 2030, these roles will blur as social media, e-commerce, everyday apps and offline channels converge. E-commerce will offer entertainment and features, making online shopping more social and content-driven than the purely transactional channel it is today. COVID-19 is radically accelerating the digital future The steady growth in online consumption and endurance of physical retail means that shoppers will come to expect retail omni-presence, with two major implications: The pandemic has forced a sudden and seismic economic shift from physical to digital. Many consumers are making digital purchases for the first time and existing consumers are spending more time online. At the same time, offline retail is taking a hit. – Traditional trade will remain relevant and will evolve with new service offerings: Traditional trade still flourishes across ASEAN. Throughout the region, there are estimated to be more than 5 million of these tiny family-owned businesses or sundry shops. They are called warung in Indonesia, Sari-sari stores in the Philippines and mamak shops in Singapore. In 2030, traditional trade will continue to be essential, offering proximity, familiarity and a form of credit, especially in rural and lower-income neighbourhoods. However, they will slowly lose market share, falling from roughly 22% today to 16% in 2030. Consumers that were previously more resistant to digitalization, such as older generations, are making their first online grocery purchases to buy dry and fresh produce for their families and starting to enjoy the convenience of home delivery. This is the first step to triggering an irreversible change in channel preferences, opening new consumer markets and increasing the share of wallet from existing e-commerce consumers. Traditional trade will evolve to offer services beyond retail, such as digital financial services (including e-wallet top-ups, microloans and mobile credit purchase) and last-mile delivery for e-commerce. This evolution will be accelerated as B2B players such as Bukalapak, Warung Pintar and GrowSari provide value chain support. For example, they enable inventory management and replenishment through mobile applications, connect In the face of supply constraints, liquidity crunch and competition from e-commerce, the long tail of traditional trade will suffer. Small, fragmented retailers across emerging ASEAN work on credit and rely on foot traffic. Many of these retailers will run out of cash and are unlikely to recover if companies, governments and other agencies do not extend support. 16 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN Direct-to-consumer channels will boom as consumers seek greater connectivity online, as well as to show their support for local businesses 7. Convenience will be the new currency ASEAN consumers value convenience over privacy and are willing to share their data across many applications. Voice and experience-based (AR and VR) influence, search and buying will grow to provide additional convenience to consumers. Convenience means different things across ASEAN. In highly congested Jakarta, it could mean being able to order a meal via Go-Jek without having to step out into the humidity and traffic. In motorbike-heavy Ho Chi Minh City, it could mean being able to buy a takeaway meal without having to dismount. In rural areas throughout the region, it could mean procuring a sack of rice without having to cycle to the nearby town. In all examples, convenience will be king; convenience is one of the top five criteria for purchase decisions across categories for all respondents – and a top three criteria for high-income consumers. Two of three consumers would be willing to give up data privacy for convenience. On average, ASEAN consumers share their data with 30-40 different mobile apps, engaging with seven to eight of them daily, all for the sake of increased convenience. As a result, two key opportunities emerge: – Increased demand for voice-controlled functions to enable convenience: As social commerce grows and messaging apps play a more important role in the purchasing journey, demand for voice-controlled purchases will rise. ASEAN consumers will embrace new opportunities to hasten the consumption journey. Already, 48% of consumers in Indonesia and 41% in Viet Nam use voice-controlled functions, compared with 35% in the US and the worldwide average of 39%. ASEAN consumers also use voice-based functionality for content consumption, with YouTube and online news websites like Okezone taking top spots in the lists of most visited sites on Alexa. Auto-replenishment options and augmented and virtual reality will also improve convenience. – Introduction of "super-apps" to provide a one-stop shop, leveraging data to extend to multiple services: "Super-apps" are platforms that provide access to and gather data across multiple "everyday use" verticals, such as messaging, e-commerce, food delivery, ride hailing and basic financial services. The mobile application landscape in ASEAN is highly fragmented today, with many apps using loyalty programs to retain consumers. There is huge potential to streamline the consumer experience with a "super-app" that provides access to a wide range of services via a single landing page – similar to the WeChat model. With access to data across multiple verticals, super apps can offer personalization, better experience and quality, and new ways of credit scoring. 8. H ealth of people and the planet will be non-negotiable Sustainability is a growing requirement across ASEAN markets, with emerging ASEAN leading the efforts. While the region now lags behind global standards, demands will accelerate in the next decade as consumer and institutional awareness grows, along with a willingness to pay. The environmental sustainability movement is becoming evident in ASEAN. Fully 80% of survey respondents claim they value sustainability and have made lifestyle changes to be eco-friendlier, up to 90% among the urban affluent. Consumer interest will increase further as sustainability becomes more affordable and prevalent. In tandem, ASEAN consumers are joining the global health and wellness movement. In Viet Nam, 90% of consumers read food labels and say they are willing to pay more for healthy food. In Indonesia, 75% of the urban population aim to eat a healthier diet and 58% want to exercise more. Two key calls to action can accelerate ASEAN consumers' journey towards environmental sustainability and personal health: Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 17 – Ensure widespread and consistent consumer awareness and motivation for healthy and sustainable living choices: The pursuit of healthy and sustainable living is inconsistent across ASEAN. One study found that 90% of Vietnamese and Filipino consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products. However, only 20% of Thailand's urban population agrees that protecting the environment is a key priority. – Accelerate the current slow but steady rise of sustainability efforts in regional and local business operations: Many ASEAN companies have been slow to implement sustainability programs, citing such issues as low customer willingness to pay, short-term financial tradeoffs and additional costs to raise standards in operations. However, some ASEAN companies are starting to respond to the sustainability imperative. For example, to encourage environmental consciousness, GoFood promotes 1,000 outlets across Indonesia that charge for plastic cutlery. The region also has seen a rise in new business models for renting and swapping fashion. In addition, multinational consumer products companies that are actively defining their sustainability agenda and getting ahead of consumer sentiment are reaping the rewards. Danone has made a concerted effort to ensure its brands uphold its "One Planet. One Health" corporate-level manifesto. The company's purpose-led brands are growing three times faster than the rest of Danone's portfolio. COVID-19 is making sustainability harder in the short term but may open new doors The pandemic could trigger a reversal of sustainability trends in the short term, with consumers increasing demand for food delivery and disposable packaging, as well as rejecting reusable grocery bags as unsanitary. ASEAN demand for sustainable products is likely to continue to lag as consumers struggle with affordability. Cash-strapped governments and businesses across ASEAN are likely to put sustainability goals on the backburner as they focus on jumpstarting the economy. However, there may be tailwinds that are longer lasting. For example, telework and virtual meetings are showing organizations that they can reduce travel, allowing employees greater flexibility and reducing air pollution. Companies are also focusing more on the health and well-being of employees and are under pressure to shorten supply chains for greater efficiency. Overall, these eight trends help us to understand the defining characteristics of the ASEAN consumer in 2030. They will mimic how urban, middle-class millennials shop, responding to similar influences across income bands via digital, trends from nearby cities and the evolving role of traditional trade. In addition, consumers will be online, albeit with different behavior and preferences. Malaysian and Singaporean consumers prefer transactional interactions, while other ASEAN markets prefer the two-way engagement of social commerce. ASEAN consumers will care more about value than brands. They will expect to be served across all channels, with similar demands on price, convenience and service across online and offline, modern and traditional retail. Finally, they will champion local – in particular, local cultures, lifestyles and food. As we detail in the following sections, business and policymakers will be required to take specific actions to capture the evolving ASEAN growth story. 18 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN Business capabilities required for the firm of the future These eight trends explain the changes coming to ASEAN and how new consumer classes will rapidly emerge as incomes continue to rise and access spreads to rural and low-income communities across the region. Despite the huge new opportunities for global, regional and local business, it will be more challenging than ever to build winning brands. The most successful companies will be those that do the best job of leveraging big data for consumer insights that help them rapidly serve changing consumer and employee needs. Firms of the future will be required to build seven critical capabilities, known collectively as the seven Rs: 1. Reset vision, mission and goals Companies will need to lead with "future-back" thinking and set a bold growth ambition for ASEAN. This will require developing a multi-year plan for the region with a hyper-local approach to win market by market. – Lead with a future-back vision: Progressive organizations are taking a "future-back" view by envisioning where the industry is heading in 10 or 20 years and working on the steps required to position their company to compete in the long term. Setting a vision will require leaders to wrestle with challenges in ecosystems, data, competition, consumer needs, technology and costs, and sustainability. For example, as ecosystems shift, businesses will need to think through how to invest in attractive profit pools and address chokepoints of the future ecosystem. Illustrative case: HelloFresh is a subscription-based meal-kit delivery system. The company delivers boxes of recipes and the exact amount of fresh ingredients needed to prepare the recipes at home. Meal kits have grown into a more than $5 billion market over nine years. – Adopt a hyper-local growth strategy: There are different ways to scale in ASEAN, but the most successful ones consistently take a hyper-local approach, moving beyond short-term plans towards multi-year goals to ensure sustainable and scalable growth. Illustrative case: Grab launched as a regional company from day one, expanding across six countries over two years. It developed a deep understanding of the markets by investing heavily in local talent and partnerships. For example, Grab teamed up with durian farmers in Malaysia to deliver the fruit across Malaysia and Singapore via GrabDurian.25 Delivery company Lalamove took a different approach by pacing its expansion, scaling across the region only after turning profits in several cities. To ensure end-to-end experiences are distinct in different markets, Lalamove separated product and technology teams for each market. 2. R ealign offerings to the new ASEAN consumer Companies will learn from insurgents about the best ways quickly to address real, unmet consumer needs, adopting an agile approach to innovation by testing and learning real-time in the market. – Innovate rapidly to address changing consumer needs: Insurgent brands have made this a cornerstone of their success – they are agile and able to adapt quickly to evolve along with consumers. On average, insurgents can innovate three times faster than big consumer goods companies by testing and learning in the market. Large companies can adopt several lessons from insurgents to increase their speed to market. They can introduce early consumer testing, shorten feedback cycles by displaying live results, or trial in smaller markets or business units, for example. – Address white spaces by tapping into unmet needs: Established companies will be required to continue cultivating new product markets by identifying white spaces. They will need to stretch, reposition and build new brands to boost penetration and consumption in nascent consumer bases. Illustrative case: In 2010, Asian females consumed nearly one third of the alcohol consumed by males globally, and almost half the levels of alcohol consumed by females in other developed markets. Asian females drank 13 times less beer than the average Asian male. Alcohol beverage companies identified these female drinkers as a large untapped opportunity. They launched a range of products that are lower in alcohol and focused on female social drinking occasions. Diageo's low-alcohol, flavoured malt spirits generated $40 million of sales in its first year. ABInBev's flavoured ready-to-drink items are now a $500 million brand. Similarly, Heineken's non-alcoholic lowercalorie beer has rapidly gained share in the beer category. 3. R eframe consumer engagement as a critical priority As ASEAN consumers spend more time online and demand greater personalization, companies will need to double down on digital engagement, optimize marketing spending to mirror the omni-channel consumer journey and focus on building two-way communication. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 19 – Rethink marketing spending to mirror the consumer journey: Modern consumers are consistently switching between online and offline channels throughout the consumer journey – from awareness to consideration, purchase and connection. Companies will need to identify specific touchpoints across a consumer's lifecycle to decide the right messaging, mix of marketing media and level of investment. For example, before purchasing a wellness product, a consumer may browse Instagram to see what her favorite influencer buys. She will then visit Watson's to compare brands and to touch and feel the product before buying on Lazada for the cheapest price. One week later, she will receive direct email marketing from the brand and make another purchase on brand.com. The best companies will double down on digital engagement, continue to invest in traditional channels such as TV and radio, but proactively reallocate marketing budget from scratch based on consumer journeys. – Use innovative platforms to increase authentic engagement: Modern consumers seek two-way interaction with brands. The best companies use innovative engagement tools to build a relationship with their consumers, creating or integrating into a community with a common cause, for example. Illustrative case: Unilever's Pond's skincare brand took advantage of the widespread popularity of mobile phones by launching a location-based campaign to educate Indonesian women of the dangers of pollution to their skin. The initiative reached more than 12 million women and generated 5% business growth. Leading diaper brand Moony publishes baby-care articles on Webtretho, Viet Nam's largest women's online community. A third example is Love, Bonito, the largest ASEAN direct-to20 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN consumer womenswear brand, which allows shoppers to vote for their favorite sold-out styles and sizes that they would like to have restocked. 4. R estructure route-to-market and win at point of sale To cater to consumer expectations for rich and integrated cross-channel experiences, companies will need to create a triple-growth engine, perfecting sales execution across traditional trade, modern trade and e-commerce. The most successful companies will increase penetration and win at the point of sale, both online and offline. – Develop new route-to-market capabilities: The routeto-market capabilities needed to win have changed dramatically and will continue to evolve. Across the supply chain, machine learning and robotics are replacing traditional services such as category management and merchandising. In retail stores, value-added services such as shelf planning are becoming less relevant in a new world in which hundreds of in-store facings are being replaced first by an online screen and then by voice ordering. To develop the right route-to-market strategy, brands will define clear priorities in five areas: market relevance; stakeholder grip; stakeholder voice; digital sources of disruption; and traditional sources of disruption. Fragmented trade calls for a triple-growth engine model. Traditional trade will increase reach to rural or lowdensity areas. Modern trade will reinforce the brand and consumer relationship in cities or high-density areas. E-commerce will increase reach and engagement across both. Within e-commerce, brands may opt for brand. com or third party (3P) models in which a brand sells on a marketplace, building a stronger relationship with the consumer and retaining greater control over the brand. First-party (1P) models, with the marketplace as a retailer, can help a company test the waters in a new market. Illustrative case: Increasingly, online businesses are venturing into offline. Online B2B marketplace Alibaba created a retail store, Hema, focused primarily on crosschannel experiences. Consumers can scan barcodes throughout the store to find product information or recipe ideas, pay for in-store purchases using the Alipay mobile platform, and dine in-store by ordering via the app and having their food served by robots. – Win at the point of sale, both online and offline: Winning at the point of sale is about recognizing different strategies for different retail environments, then executing well. In offline channels, this means designing the right KPIs based on shopper insights, seamless in-store execution through effective key account management and embedding changes with reliable tracking and incentive systems. In e-commerce, this process involves product audits to ensure listed products stand out as well as keyword and search optimization and product description, image and category optimization. Also, important: using digital marketing to increase relevant traffic through direct-to-consumer channels. 5. Rethink supply chains As consumers demand personalization and convenience, supply chains will need to be distributed and flexible, capable of delivering mass customization and high-speed fulfilment at a low cost. A diversified and digital supply chain will help guarantee production capacity and secure a more robust supply pipeline in times of stress and unpredictability. – Accelerate mass customization capability by outsourcing or partnering in supply chains: Today's supply chains can accommodate mass production and small batch customization. However, supply chains of the future will be designed for mass customization, with a lot size of one, to allow companies to serve the growing consumer demand for personalization and rapid innovation. Outsourcing to specialized service providers will thus be key to compete. Certain options for outsourcing or partnering are shared below. Original design manufacturers (ODM) offer product design and manufacturing services before handing those products over to another firm for branding. Contract manufacturers (CM) focus on manufacturing or producing components. Supply-chain providers such as thirdparty logistics players (3PL) provide internal and external logistics services to bring the right product to the right person at the right time. – Enhance last-mile delivery capability at a low cost by building, outsourcing or partnering: By 2030, lastmile delivery will be highly automated and disrupted by new fulfilment innovations such as drones, robots and autonomous vehicles. These innovations will drive down costs of individual trips but increase total system cost due to a higher share of direct delivery. Five primary last-mile delivery modes are in use today; they may be leveraged and are illustrated below. Illustrative case: – High-volume deliveries in trucks and vans offered by 3PL providers JNE Express and NinjaVan – Higher-speed deliveries via cars offered by LalaMove and Lazada Express – Motorbike deliveries offered by mobility players Go-Jek and AhaMove – Bicycles or delivery on foot offered by food delivery companies Deliveroo and GrabFood – T hese delivery modes will be increasingly complemented by self-pick-up at drop-off points such as SingPost POPStations and FairPrice Click&Collect Lockers, or at Pomelo Fashion's or Watson's retail stores. – Invest in supply chain digitalization: Companies should consider investing in digital capabilities to build supply chains that will best serve them in 2030. – Smart automation, which includes capabilities such as 3D printing, predictive maintenance and automated warehousing, will significantly accelerate operations, reduce error rates, increase flexibility and enable customization. – End-to-end visibility and collaboration. With real-time transparency of customer and supplier data and product traceability, control towers will be able to increase operational responsiveness and enable faster cycle times. – Intelligent supply chains, with advanced R&D management and planning and forecasting capabilities, will reduce speed to market and improve return on investment. – Next-generation employees. Training employees to use new tools and technology will improve safety and productivity. 6. R eimagine operating model and talent The best firms of the future will win through scale and speed, with a lean structure and agile operating model. They will make the required investments to attract and reskill talent. – Build an innovative operating model for a firm of the future: The ASEAN firm of the future will feel different in many ways, including how it pools resources, structures Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 21 talent, partners to gain critical capabilities, becomes more flexible and scales. Resources will shift from traditional silos to cross-functional teams. Supervisors will move from rigid management towards coaching and leadership. Firms will maximize value throughout the ecosystem, not only within their organization, and operating models will advance from fixed routines to organizational adaptation. Illustrative case: Unilever relies on a flexible operating model, agile ways of working and an ecosystem to improve speed and scale. A team of five developed the Unilever natural beauty brand ApotheCARE. By leveraging the manufacturing, logistics and sales capabilities of the umbrella company, the cross-functional and co-located core team was able to focus on brand management, product development and innovation. ApotheCARE was developed in a year – three times faster than the market average. Within ASEAN, Unilever's partnership with Lazada allows it to experiment with products online prior to distribution, and to gain data-driven insights to better tailor product offerings. – Be agile and tap into small-brand growth: Companies can apply several different models to become agile and tap into small-brand growth. They can build growth through technology laboratories or research centres as well as rely on open innovation. For example, Vingroup has set up a research centre dedicated to applied internet of things, artificial intelligence, robotics and smart manufacturing in South Korea. Indofood launched a pitch competition, focusing on nutritional solutions, at Jakarta's Block 71, the state-sponsored start-up hub. Companies can also grow by investing in accelerators and incubators or through acquisitions and corporate 22 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN venture capital. For example, GrabVentures provides resources and mentorships to grow technology start-ups in South-East Asia. Mondelez has invested in a "Shopper Futures" incubator focused on the redesign of consumer retail experiences. Tokopedia, an e-commerce platform in Indonesia, recently acquired Parent Story and Bride Story to gain data on consumer needs and purchase behavior during life occasions. – Develop a new perspective on the future of work and talent acquisition: Companies need to redefine their value propositions amid shifting employee expectations. Millennials have different workplace motivations from their older counterparts. Millennials look for collaborative work cultures and thrive with continued learning opportunities and immediate feedback. In contrast, Gen X workers prefer to work independently with minimal supervision. They are motivated by benefits such as bonuses and recognition from their supervisor. There is a clear need to innovate the talent model and develop a value proposition that offers features such as purpose, expert career tracks, flexible work arrangements and differentiated compensation, including stock options and more. The nature of work will continue to evolve, increasing the complexity of talent management. Greater connectivity and data sharing will change how jobs are performed. Innovations will change the basis of competition and force companies to rethink which jobs matter most. Meanwhile, advanced technologies will require workers to gain new and different skills – the half-life of employees' skills has declined significantly over the past two years and the trend will continue. In addition, technology is expanding the set of potential partners available to organizations as contractors, freelancers and consultants. 7. R e-envision the role of sustainability Companies will need to embrace sustainability as the next "digital" and elevate it in their corporate agenda with solutions that create a win-win for business and society. – Adopt a step change in the corporate sustainability agenda: No industry is immune to the disruptions created by the sustainability revolution, which is arriving faster than many companies had expected. A polarization between global and local companies is emerging in ASEAN – global companies are bringing in best-demonstrated practices from their headquarters while local companies are two steps behind. Sustainability encompasses a growing list of environmental and social issues. In environmental matters, for example, ASEAN is the world's largest producer of mismanaged plastic waste, generating a staggering 30 times more than the US. Yet sustainability will also open doors, shifting profit pools to diverse industries such as alternative meat and electric vehicles. For example, the market value of alternative beverages is estimated at $13 billion and growing 12% annually. Companies will need to embrace sustainability as the next "digital" to be able to tackle upcoming challenges while making the most of new opportunities. – Use innovative strategies to create a win-win for business and society: Companies will need to accelerate sustainability efforts to generate awareness and build the foundations of a circular economy. This will require initial investment as consumer attitudes in ASEAN lag behind other regions and South-East Asia is still low on the experience curve. For example, Singapore recycles only 4% of its plastic waste today. However, as sustainability concerns grow and ASEAN advances on the experience curve, consumers will be more willing to pay and sustainable products will become more affordable, driving exponential growth in consumption. Companies like Friesland Campina are leading the charge by creating sustainability wins. The dairy company has boosted the nutritional profile of its milk powder products to combat malnutrition in Indonesia. The issue is significant across ASEAN, where 26% of children under five are stunted due to malnutrition.26 In Indonesia, this number is 31%.27 In Indonesia, one out of every three children is unable to grow to full potential, a situation that compromises the quality of talent and income-earning abilities when these children enter the workforce. ASEAN executives can learn from the approaches taken by their global counterparts to address sustainability. Illustrative case: – D evelop new delivery models and products to reduce waste and increase convenience. Evian achieves both with its in-home water dispenser. Unilever's toothpaste tablets come in a reusable package and replace plastic tubes. – Introduce product and service offerings that disrupt a company before they find themselves disrupted by others. Tyson Foods, one of the largest food companies in the world, invested in cultured meat start-up Memphis Meats. – R adically retool operations to become fully circular and traceable. Olam introduced the AtSource sustainability tool to allow costumers to trace products and measure their impact on the environment, communities and farmer livelihoods. Redefine value for the enterprise, placing sustainability at the same level as economic. Sustainability is integral to the identity of US outdoor clothing brand Patagonia, whose mission is "in business to save our home planet". Patagonia focuses on active waste reduction, sustainable procurement and brand activism. – B uild partnerships to reshape the value chain in a sustainable way. For example, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste teams up consumer goods companies with chemical manufacturers and other supplychain service providers to stimulate market-based solutions on infrastructure, education, innovation and clean-up efforts. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 23 Critical societal challenges and calls to action As businesses take these necessary moves, the goal of inclusive and sustainable consumption-driven growth will only truly materialize when ASEAN's public and private sectors collaborate to overcome key hurdles. In the short term, the priority is to address COVID-related health and humanitarian issues. In the longer term, ASEAN needs to address systemic challenges in infrastructure, resources, talent, inclusion and regulation. While stakeholders have joined forces to initiate many effective programs, fully overcoming these challenges and boosting consumption to the levels projected for 2030 requires intensifying their efforts with three critical calls to action: – Establish regulations for a more inter-connected ASEAN: Governments need to set regulations for a more integrated and connected ASEAN to protect the region from external shocks. The three areas that would benefit the most are trade, labour and investments. ASEAN governments can increase the flow of commerce by reducing tariffs and eliminating non-tariff barriers such as complex licensing, foreign equity and land acquisitions. They can increase efficiency and competitiveness by creating a single Window electronic platform for exchange, including customs clearances, and by sharing best practices. 1. C reate trade and investor-friendly reforms They can facilitate the movement of skilled labour through improved legal frameworks and standardized recognition of academic and professional certifications. Governments and NGOs in ASEAN will have increasing influence to shape consumption and enable the digital economy to flourish. This means creating trade and investor-friendly reforms for greater transparency and a more interconnected ASEAN. They can integrate financial markets to encourage capital flows, enhance payment connectivity and remove investment restrictions in manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, mining and related services. – Develop investor-friendly environments and improve transparency: To attract foreign investment and promote domestic innovation, governments should build technology ecosystems, positioning select cities as start-up hubs that become incubators for innovation and leverage ASEAN's booming digital economy. Case study: China made Beijing a start-up hub with a strategy covering five key dimensions: (1) a tech-savvy culture; (2) availability of tech talent; (3) availability of public and private funding; (4) technology- and innovationfriendly regulations; and (5) state-of-the-art infrastructure. For example, Beijing offered streamlined permanent residency for foreign dependents of Chinese talent and established a new immigration bureau to provide better service to foreigners. The city also set up a $4.5 billion innovation incubation fund, focusing on sectors such as 5G, AI and smart vehicles. In parallel, the public sector will need to address the lack of transparency in foreign investments. Most ASEAN member states continue to grapple with inflated bureaucracy and opaque processes. Thailand Plus is an effort to improve the ease of doing business by introducing reforms and tax incentives. This includes amending the Foreign Business Act to simplify visa and work permit application processes for foreign investors. In recent years, Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam have stepped up anti-corruption efforts. Initiatives include establishing an anti-corrupt commission and strengthening the anti-corruption legal framework. 24 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN The ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) was established in 2015 to enable a single market and production base through the seamless movement of goods and services, labour and investment across the region. While the AEC has made some inroads, its slow progress has dampened investor sentiments. In a 2019 survey, 3% of businesses polled said economic integration under the AEC is progressing fast enough and 46% are uncertain about AEC's impact.28 2. Invest in socio-economic inclusion To spur inclusiveness, regulators need to invest in education, healthcare and access to financial services. This will not only ensure a human-centric approach for a competitive and skilled workforce but also will help to design and implement a methodology for reducing inequality. – Develop the right models for education and skilling for talent retention and growth: ASEAN will add 40 million working-age people to its ranks over the next decade. The region needs to provide them with the right skills and gainful employment, while reducing the brain flow of the best talent to more developed economies. Within ASEAN, Singapore's SkillsFuture for Digital Workplace provides the adult workforce with opportunities to learn new skills or increase their productivity. Public-private partnerships further facilitate the knowledge transfer. For example, Grab Indonesia is working closely with the University of Indonesia to nurture local talent and prepare Indonesians to take part in the digital economy. Case study: ASEAN governments can learn from the education system in Finland, which focuses on three key areas: soft skills, cognitive skills and technical skills. Finnish schools use gaming apps to teach children social skills such as trust. To master higher cognitive skills such as critical thinking, statistics and creative writing, schools use phenomenon-based learning. Students learn about what is happening in the world, such as the climate-change phenomenon, by integrating different sources of information and skillsets. To increase technical capabilities, schools introduce information technology (IT) as a core skill alongside maths and science and offer electives in advanced IT and data analysis. – Push for financial and healthcare inclusion to improve social equity: Delivery of basic financial and healthcare services to rural and low-income populations has been an enduring challenge throughout much of ASEAN. The region's hope of increasing inclusion will require a coordinated approach across stakeholders. For financial services, there are five main hurdles to increasing banking penetration in rural areas: lack of a customer-identification system; lack of data and credit history for traditional credit scoring systems; poor mobile broadband coverage; low financial literacy; and low income (leading to low-revenue potential and a high cost to serve). While there have been ASEAN initiatives to improve financial literacy, overcoming the many hurdles will require more systemic efforts at scale. Some projects are showing early progress. For example, the Philippines' National Strategy for Financial Inclusion addresses policy, financial education, advocacy and data. The Financial Services Authority (OJK) of Indonesia launched Laku Pandai (branchless banking) in 2015 with four of the nation's largest banks to boost access to financial services in rural areas, engaging more than 125,000 agents. Case study: Aadhaar is a biometric ID system introduced by the Indian government in 2010. It is considered the world's largest digital-identity program. In 2016, Aadhar was provided with statutory backing to be linked to government services. By 2018, Aadhar had reached 1.17 billion people, 89% of the Indian population, and over seven years it doubled banking penetration to 80%. Government and regulatory backing were critical for its success. For healthcare services, priorities include expanding access and strengthening the quality of medical care, especially in rural and poor areas. Across emerging ASEAN, the healthcare industry remains underdeveloped. Consider that the largest economy, Indonesia, spends 64 times less per capita on healthcare compared to the US.29 Public and private investor funding, strategic partnerships and programs to attract healthcare and R&D talent are some ways that stakeholders can collaborate to build healthy cities. Case study: Telemedicine is an emerging solution to bringing healthcare access to the geographically dispersed and mobile-first populations of emerging ASEAN. In Viet Nam, Doctor Anywhere and Viettel partnered to provide online healthcare services to ViettelPay users. Through Viettel's extensive network coverage, rural communities can access high-quality healthcare through their mobile phones. Case study: Singapore sets the standard in ASEAN for healthcare – it is ranked second on the Bloomberg Healthcare Efficiency Index and fourth on the Medical Tourism Index globally. The city-state has built a leading hardware-sharing platform, providing policy support for the industry as well as full-service support and facilities. This has been a key ingredient for attracting healthcare talent. The Ng Teng Fong Centre for Healthcare Innovation features expert knowledge networks, labs and tools to facilitate healthcare and industry collaboration. The HealthCity Novena for 2030 initiative aims to build a holistic ecosystem, including health services and research facilities. Singapore also provides easy access to good schools, residential areas and transport to meet the needs of the healthcare community. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 25 3. U pgrade infrastructure for a connected and sustainable future ASEAN will need to build infrastructure to support and sustain rapidly expanding economic activity. This includes both the physical and digital infrastructure to facilitate connectivity and sustainability. – Enhance physical and digital infrastructure, especially in cities: ASEAN's traffic jams are notorious. Much of the region also suffers from a lack of affordable housing, low security and poor logistics networks. To improve the situation, ASEAN governments are starting to develop smart cities. For example, Thailand 4.0 Environment aims to develop targeted urban areas into becoming the world's most liveable cities. The Indonesian Ministry of Industry has created an integrated roadmap for investing in advanced technologies such as AI and robotics. The roadmap requires collaborative actions among multiple stakeholders that span government and academic institutions, trade associations and industry players. Case study: ASEAN leaders can look to efforts in India. The country's Smart City Mission is developing 100 smart cities across the country, before rolling out the program to 4,000 cities nationwide. The first application involves Smart Meters to reduce utility consumption while increasing reliability. The Smart Meter National Programme was established to replace conventional energy meters with smart meters across the nation. Smart Mobility for traffic management and parking, New Delhi's Intelligent Traffic Management system, relies on AI to manage traffic and sensors to detect violators. Meanwhile, Smart Building will improve the efficiency of lighting, waste and water management. India is now the fourth-largest market for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building-sustainability certifications. Meanwhile, the country's Smart Government was created to expand access to education and healthcare via e-Education and tele-health. In addition to smart cities, ASEAN will be required to ensure high-speed and reliable internet connectivity and the widespread availability of electricity in urban and rural areas. Case study: China's experience serves as a model. The country brought 5G to 50 cities in late 2019 in one of the world's largest single 5G rollouts. 5G outperforms 4G in speed, reliability, efficiency and scalability to meet demand for critical and radical new applications. The Chinese government prioritized building out 5G capabilities, provided virtually free airwaves and discounted equipment to telecom operators, and launched R&D for 6G. Indonesia recently completed the Palapa Ring project, an infrastructure investment to build more than 35,000km of land and sea fibre-optic cables across the country, bringing 4G internet services to even the most outlying regions. The overarching ambitions of the government are to connect the archipelago, improve digital literacy and invest in the digital economy.30 26 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN – Improve efficiency of resource management and promote sustainable development: To keep up with growing demand, ASEAN will need to develop efficient resource management and alternative sources of energy to decrease dependence on oil and gas. It also must develop an organized effort to address a range of other environmental threats such as the mounting challenge of plastic waste. In this context, it will be important for ASEAN to incorporate sustainability development targets into policy planning and accelerate public-private partnerships. Case study: The Global Plastic Action Partnership (GPAP), a public-private partnership convened by the World Economic Forum, was formed in 2018 to tackle plastic pollution. In 2019, the Government of Indonesia joined the partnership, setting a target to reduce marine plastic leakage by 70% by 2025. Viet Nam will formally join in 2020; it will work with the Grameen Creative Lab and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste as part of its effort to reduce reduce marine plastic waste by 75% by 2030. The Central Java Power Plant, part of Indonesia's plan to boost energy supply, played a critical role in helping the country avoid a national energy crisis. In the Philippines, the Quezon City Integrated Solid Waste Management Project has plans to work with the private sector in processing municipal solid waste. Another global example is the Tropical Forest Alliance, a public-private partnership hosted by the World Economic Forum with more than 150 partners working across Latin America, Africa and South-East Asia to reduce deforestation resulting from commodity production. As they accelerate these advances, policy-makers will need to strike the right balance between technology advancement and job creation, economic development and sustainability, and scale advantages and concentration of power. Post-COVID rebuilding and recovery In the face of COVID-19, the three critical calls to action only grow in urgency. The black swan event has highlighted the need for ASEAN to build greater interconnectivity and resilience to withstand future shocks. In particular, developing economies must continue to boost socio-economic inclusion and invest in infrastructural development to ensure connectivity, food security and healthcare capacity in times of crisis. The immediate priority for governments and policymakers is to address the impact of the pandemic. They must protect their people on two fronts. For health, they must push for vigilant testing, effective prevention and treatment. For livelihoods, they must provide stimuli to jumpstart the economy before moving into reintegrating into global flows and preparing for a reshuffling of supply chains. Conclusion ASEAN is poised to become a dramatic consumption opportunity, driven by four mega-forces: strong demographic trends; rising income levels; geopolitical shifts increasing foreign investment; and digital advances opening new consumer markets. Consumer behaviors are fast evolving, with the young, urban, middle-class consumer of 2030 seeking personalized, valuefor-money, social and integrative experiences across online and offline channels. While commonalities exist, each ASEAN market will evolve differently and a "multi-local" approach will remain key for companies hoping to win in this highly diverse region. Business, government and policy-makers will have increasing influence in the marketplace to guide the region towards a sustainable consumption future. Achieving this vision requires dedicated collaboration across stakeholders, through innovative and inclusive business models supported by a favorable policy environment. COVID-19 is the first of many trials that will add uncertainty – and expose the weaknesses that need to be addressed. The private sector will need to embrace stakeholder capitalism by prioritizing consumer relationships and put sustainability higher on the agenda. For their part, the public sector will need to create trade and investor-friendly reforms, invest in socio-economic inclusion through talent development and upgrading infrastructure for a connected and sustainable future. These public-private partnerships are critical to unlock the full potential of ASEAN and to safeguard its growth story as one of the three fastest-growing consumer markets in the world. Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 27 Appendices Figure 4: ASEAN economies by projected real GDP growth and real GDP per capita Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit (real GDP); Fitch Connect (population) Figure 5: Policy initiatives that are accelerating digital adoption in the region Country Initiative Objective and impact Singapore Smart Nation Initiative31 – Three key pillars: Digital Government, Economy and Society Digital Transformation Acceleration Programme32 – Program aims to make Malaysian companies more competitive through a structured approach to digital transformation Malaysia – Initiatives include National Digital Identity, Smart Urban Mobility and OpenCerts (blockchainbased platform for academic certificates) – Grants are provided by MDEC (Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation) and MIDA (Malaysian Investment Development Authority) – Partners include digital and professional services firms like Siemens, Bosch, Rockwell Automation and Deloitte Thailand Thailand 4.033 – Five Agendas for Thailand 4.0 include: Development of Technology Cluster and Future Industries – New engines of growth identified include: Smart Electronics, Agriculture and Biotechnology (e.g., creating 20,000 "smart farmers") Indonesia Making Indonesia 4.034 – Digital agenda within the 10 national priorities include: Build Nationwide Digital Infrastructure; Establish Innovation Ecosystem; Incentivize Technology Investment The Philippines Industry Philippines 4.035 – Focus on intelligent factories, smarter cities and data science; e.g., long-term advanced manufacturing goals are to continue technology upgrading to maintain a globally competitive and innovative manufacturing industry Viet Nam Viet Nam Digital Transformation Alliance36 – Launched in Hanoi as part of ICT Summit 2019 28 – Initiated by Viet Nam's Software and IT Services Association (VINASA); founding members include FPT, Viettel, CMC, VNG and MobiFone – Mission to inspire society to digital transformation through creating infrastructure and services to help businesses and society go digital, such as expanding the national broadband network, implementing 5G mobile connectivity and sharing knowledge in latest technologies Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN Figure 6: Growth drivers of ASEAN markets Growth drivers Tier 2 city growth High valueadded services Exports Domestic vs exports (2018) Main export categories Frontier Emerging Developed Increasing Rising working disposable population income Opportunistic investments from north Asia China is largest foreign investor to Laos, secondlargest trade partner Potential/ emerging focus Electronics, machinery Fintech, agritech, advanced manufacturing Electronics, machinery Public infrastructure, logistics, e-commerce Electronics, oil and gas Robotics, biotech, aerospace, tourism Oil and gas, palm oil Tourism, infrastructure and property development Semiconductors Manufacturing, public infrastructure Electronics, textiles E-commerce, edtech, modern agribusiness China to mitigate Cambodia's losses from potential EU sanctions 65 of 113 foreign invested projects in Yangon are funded by China Note: Domestic consumption refers to the sum of private and government consumption, investments less imports from 2018; Source: Euromonitor (exports); Business Times; Industry.gov.ph; The Jakarta Post; Lit search Note: Domestic consumption refers to the sum of private and government consumption, investments less imports from 2018; Source: Euromonitor (exports); Business Times; Industry.gov.ph; The Jakarta Post; Lit search Figure 7: Household consumption across basic, special treat and first luxury categories by income level Figure 7: Household consumption across basic, special treat and first luxury categories by income level Basic Goods of first necessity, with slight differentiation by income band 78% of total consumption Special treat Tipping point from middle/upper middle class 17% of total consumption First luxury Increasing consumption across income bands 5% of total consumption 11.4x 4.7x 2.3x Low Rise in income High Low Rise in income High Low Rise in income High Note: (*) Alcohol is excluded from the average of 4.7x as an outlier; Source: Bain offline consumer survey (N=1,741), October 2019 SNG Graphics for report_v2 6 Note: (*) Alcohol is excluded from the average of 4.7x as an outlier; Source: Bain offline consumer survey (N=1,741), October 2019 Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 29 Key contributors The World Economic Forum would like to acknowledge and extend its sincere gratitude to the project collaborator, Bain & Company. Thanks also to the broad community of contributors across Partner companies, start-ups, academics, government and policy representatives and experts who participated in meetings, provided input during interviews and helped in the overall research. While the views expressed in this preliminary perspective do not reflect the totality of opinions, their participation and guidance were critical. Proprietary research and research partners In addition to inputs from more than 80 reports and databases on macro-economic and business data, this report draws rich insights from proprietary research conducted by our research partners for the purpose of this project: – Study of Consumption in Indonesia 2019 – A consumer survey conducted across 2,000 (N=1,741 after population weighting) households and 16 cities and regencies across urban and rural Indonesia, led by Bain and IPSOS – Macroeconomic research for historical and current data and future projections for Indonesia, led by Bain – 40 in-depth interviews with global, regional and local ASEAN leaders across consumer business, policy and civic society organizations Organizations whose leaders were interviewed for key insights and/or joined us for workshops: – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 30 Auric Pacific Group Ayala Corporation BKPM (Indonesia Investment Coordinating Board) Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) CB Richard Ellis Group Colgate-Palmolive DSG Partners Endeavor Friesland Campina Google Green Eastern Agri Indofood Agri Resources International Trade Centre Jacobs Douwe Egberts Jungle Ventures Keppel Corporation Keppel Land International Kimberly-Clark Lazada Marico McDonald's Mega Lifesciences Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – Mirium MullenLowe Netflix New Hope Group Nielsen OVO Pencils of Promise Singapore International Chamber of Commerce SM Investments Corporation Standard Chartered Bank Suntory Beverage & Food Asia Unilever University of Maryland US-ASEAN Business Council Wunderman Thompson World Economic Forum Project Team Zara Ingilizian, Head of Consumer Industries and Platform for Shaping the Future of Consumption, US Mayuri Ghosh, Project Lead, Platform for Shaping the Future of Consumption, US Bain & Company Project Team Praneeth Yendamuri, Project Leader, Partner, Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, Singapore Mike Booker, Project Advisor, Partner, Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, Singapore Nader Elkhweet, Project Advisor, Partner, Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, Jakarta Edy Widjaja, Project Advisor, Partner, Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, Jakarta Gerald Tan, Project Advisor, Partner, Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, Singapore Laura Norrie, Project Advisor, Practice Principal, Consumer Products in Asia-Pacific, Sydney Mengyi Wu, Manager, Singapore Chloe Chuah, Consultant, Singapore Selina Ong, Consultant, Singapore Winny Mulyasasmita, Associate Consultant, Jakarta Endnotes 1. ASEAN including Timor Leste 2. Economic Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on ASEAN, ASEAN Policy Brief, April 2020, see here: https://asean.org/ storage/2020/04/ASEAN-Policy-Brief-April-2020_FINAL.pdf 3. EIU; Fitch Connect 4. Bain Macro Trends Group view on Labour 2030: The Collision of Demographics, Automation and Inequality; Cisco and Oxford Economics 2018 report on Technology and the Future of ASEAN Jobs; see here: https://www.bain.com/insights/ labour-2030-the-collision-of-demographics-automation-andinequality/ and https://www.oxfordeconomics.com/recentreleases/dd577680-7297-4677-aa8f-450da197e132 5. World Bank Ease of Doing Business Index 2019; Transparency International Corruptions Perception Index 2018 6. Hootsuite: We are Social Digital Country Reports for Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos (2019), see here: https://www. slideshare.net/DataReportal/digital-2019-cambodia-january2019-v01 7. Fitch Connect (working population 2018-2030); Euromonitor (productivity, manufacturing worker hourly cost, 2018) 8. Euromonitor; National statistics (UN) 9. Jakarta Globe; Global Business Guide 10. Population figures and household income band definition by Fitch Connect; consumption contribution by household income band in Indonesia derived from the Bain World Economic Forum ASEAN consumer survey 19. Facebook-Bain Digital Consumer Survey 2019 (Bain E-Commerce Survey, N=12,965) 20. Euromonitor, Beauty and Personal Care in Viet Nam 2019 21. Market share estimated by Nielsen, quoted from The Jakarta Post (24 June 2019), see here: https://www.thejakartapost. com/news/2019/06/23/executive-column-we-want-wardahto-have-50-percent-market-share-we-want-to-be-the-king. html 22. Bain World Economic Forum ASEAN consumer survey 2019 23. Market Track consumer survey (N=1,200), 2017, see here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/ home/20170330005423/en/New-Market-Track-StudyReveals-Retail-Sector 24. Bain World Economic Forum ASEAN consumer survey 2019 25. National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre: Global Data Global Survey 2014 (N=24,537 across 25 countries); WHO 26. UNICEF/ WHO/ World Bank Group Joint Child Malnutrition Estimates, Levels and trends in Child Malnutrition (2017) 27. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2 April 2019), see here: http://www.fao.org/indonesia/news/ detail-events/en/c/1188105/ 28. The Asean Post, ASEAN lacks real economic integration (4 September 2019); see here: https://theaseanpost.com/article/ asean-lacks-real-economic-integration 29. Global Data, 2019 11. In this report, the poverty line is $1,000 in household annual income (unadjusted for PPP) to allow for comparison across ASEAN; this is different from the international definition of poverty line of $1.90 per day set by the World Bank 30. Asean Briefing, Indonesia's Palapa Ring: Bringing Connectivity to the Archipelago (28 January 2020), see here https://www. aseanbriefing.com/news/indonesias-palapa-ring-bringingconnectivity-archipelago/ 12. World Economic Forum Insight Reports on Future of Consumption in China and India 31. Singapore Smart Nation Initiatives, see here: https://www. smartnation.sg/what-is-smart-nation/initiatives 13. Euromonitor; Bain World Economic Forum ASEAN consumer survey 2019 32. Driving the Digital Industrial Revolution, by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, available here: https://mdec.my/digitaleconomy-initiatives/for-the-industry/corporations/digitaltransformation-acceleration-programmeme/ 14. Economic Impact of COVID-19 Outbreak on ASEAN, ASEAN Policy Brief, April 2020, https://asean.org/storage/2020/04/ ASEAN-Policy-Brief-April-2020_FINAL.pdf 15. Book-a-stylist is a personal styling service provided by fashion retailer Love, Bonito; see here: https://www.lovebonito.com/ sg/sign-up-book-a-stylist-singapore 16. Euromonitor 17. Euromonitor 18. HootSuite: We are Social 2019 report indicates that the global average time spent using the internet via any device (hrs/ day) is 6.8 vs ASEAN-6 at 8.2 hrs/day; the Philippines is the highest at 10 hrs/day 33. What is Thailand 4.0?, see here: https://thaiembdc.org/ thailand-4-0-2/ 34. Ministry of Indonesia presentation on Making Indonesia 4.0, July 2018, see here: https://www.kemenperin.go.id/ download/19347 35. Roadmaps for the Future of Philippines Industries, see here (manufacturing): http://industry.gov.ph/category/ manufacturing/ 36. Viet Nam's Digital Transformation Alliance Makes Debut, 13 August 2019, available to read on FPT website here: https://www.fpt-software.com/news/Viet Nams-digitaltransformation-alliance-makes-debut/ Future of Consumption in Fast-Growth Consumer Markets: ASEAN 31 The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. World Economic Forum 91–93 route de la Capite CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva Switzerland Tel.: +41 (0) 22 869 1212 Fax: +41 (0) 22 786 2744 contact@weforum.org www.weforum.org

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TechNY Daily July 29, 2021 Edition 605 TechNY15 Stock Index: 1,502.89 (+18.11) (+1.2%) Keeping the NYC Tech Industry Informed Small Planet Just now·10 min read __________________ 1. Google has delayed the reopening of its offices until October 18. Google will also require vaccinations for anyone coming to the office. Offices were to reopen right after Labor Day. (CNBC) 2. Twitter has closed its NYC and San Francisco offices over new COVID concerns. The company reopened the offices two weeks ago on July 12. (New York Post) 3. NYC's Bubble, a no-code development platform, has raised $100 million in a Series A funding. NYC-based private equity firm Insight Partners led the round. Bubble's platform, which has one million users globally, allows entrepreneurs to build web applications like Airbnb or Twitter without relying on engineers. (www.bubble.io) (Reuters) 4. Brooklyn's Block Renovation, a tech platform that simplifies home renovation, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding. Giant Ventures led the round and was joined by NEA, Morningside, NYC's Lerer Hippeau and Obvious Ventures. Block uses LiDAR-enabled site surveying, 3D visualization and quality design standards to reduce overall kitchen construction time by up to 50%. (www.blockrenovation.com) (BusinessWire) 5. NYC's Bbot, an ordering and payment processing platform for restaurants, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding. The round was led by CRV. Bbot makes a mobile order and payments platform that restaurants can use to promote contactless interaction with customers. (www.meetbbot.com) (The Spoon) 6. NYC's Obé Fitness, a digital fitness platform, has raised $15 million in a Series A funding. CAVU Venture Partners led the round and was joined by Athleta, Samsung Next, Tiffany Haddish, Wheelhouse Entertainment, WW International, Cassius Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, Harris Blitzer Sports Entertainment and BDMI. Obé — which stands for Our Body Electric — is a $27 per month streaming platform that features 22 live daily fitness classes and more than 6,000 on-demand classes. (www.obefitness.com) (TechCrunch) ______________________________________________________________ Small Planet offers on-demand teams that allow you to scale rapidly and accelerate delivery timelines. Our developers and designers can onboard quickly to help you build out iOS, Android, Full Stack, and Shopify products. Do you have short-term or project-specific needs? Contact us. (Sponsored Content) __________________________________________________________ 7. NYC's Outbrain, a content recommendation platform, raised $160 million in its initial pubic offering last Thursday. The stock closed at $20.99 a share on its first day of trading valuing the company at $1.25 billion. Outbrain now trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol "OB". (www.outbrain.com) (VentureBeat) 8. NYC's JOKR, a grocery delivery startup, has raised $170 million in a Series A funding. GGV Capital, Balderton Capital and NYC's Tiger Global Management led the round and were joined by Activant Capital, NYC's Greycroft, FJ Labs, Kaszek, and Monashees. The company plans to offer 15 minute delivery by turning as many as 100 NYC storefront locations into micro-fulfillment centers.(www.jokr.it) (TechCrunch) 9. Intel Corp's autonomous driving division Mobileye is testing its self-driving technology on the streets of NYC. The company received a testing permit after supplying data from self-driving programs in other cities. The test cars have a human standby driver behind the wheel. You can watch a video of an autonomous drive around Manhattan here. (Future Car) 10. The New York Post reported on NYC's Barstool Sports' efforts to provide financial support to NYC restaurants during the pandemic. In exchange for the support, the restaurants are required to keep their staff and stay up-to-date with rent and payroll. Among the 25 NYC restaurants which have received from $5,000 to $60,000 are Jackbar in Williamsburg, Kirvens in The Bronx, Eagle Pickle Works in Queens and Portobello Cafe in Staten Island. (www.barstoolsports.com) (New York Post) 11. NYC's Vestwell, a platform which empowers workplace savings and investing programs, has raised $70 million in a Series C funding. Wells Fargo Strategic Capital and Fin Venture Capital co-led the round, and were joined by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Manulife, Point72, Nationwide Ventures, Allianz Life Ventures, Northwestern Mutual, FinTech Collective, Greenspring Associates, NYC's Primary Venture Partners, Teamworthy Ventures, F-Prime Capital, Industry Ventures and Commerce Ventures. Vestwell's platform provides digital recordkeeping for 401(k) and 403(b) plans. (www.vestwell.com) (PR Newswire) 12. NYC's Quit Genius, a digital treatment platform for addictions, has raised $64 million in a Series B funding round. The round was co-led by Kinnevik and Atomico with participation from Octopus Ventures, Triple Point Ventures and Startup Health. The company offers treatment programs for tobacco, alcohol and opioid addictions utilizing virtual cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, coaching and a connected breath sensor. Quit Genius is one of the U.K startups in NYC. (www.quitgenius.com) (MobiHealth News) ________ We have special sale pricing on TechNY Daily sponsorship and advertising opportunities. For information, contact: Lauren@techny.nyc ____________________________________________ TechNY Recruit Jobs Job Postings are on sale. Contact us at jobpostings@techny.nyc Yotpo (new) Yotpo is a leading eCommerce marketing platform on a mission to help brands of all sizes accelerate their growth through exceptional customer experiences. Yotpo secured a $230 million fundraising round in March (you can call us a unicorn our valuation is now $1.4 billion), and our primary goal is to deliver the best technology in the industry. Customer Success Manager Strategic Client Success Manager HRBP Solutions Engineer Product Marketing Manager Director of Employer Branding TA Coordinator Director of CS SMS Account Director Sales Manager Strategic SMS Account Director Partner Marketing Manager Sales Operations Manager LeafLink (new) LeafLink is the cannabis industry's standard wholesale ordering platform and the largest B2B marketplace connecting licensed cannabis brands and retailers across the country. Brand & Content Marketing Director Senior Regional Marketing Manager Senior Product Marketing Manager Senior Growth Marketing Manager Ethena (new) Ethena delivers modern, effective workplace eLearning. Our first product, harassment prevention training, focuses on culture change over compliance. Ethena is trusted by some of the most innovative companies including Netflix, Zendesk, Figma, and Medium. We are backed by top-tier investors like GSV, Homebrew, and Neo. Senior Full-Stack Engineer Senior Front-End Engineer Senior Backend Engineer Lead Product Manager Growth Marketing and Demand Generation Lead Mid-Market Account Executive Slate (new) Slate is a web and mobile product used by some of the top brands in the world to create branded social media content in seconds. Slate has customers from the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, EPL as well as some of the largest media, beauty and entertainment brands in the world. Product Designer, UI/UX Ceros (new) Ceros is looking for a New Business Director to join our team! If you're not familiar with us, Ceros is a cloud-based platform that empowers over 650 clients the likes of Red Bull, Aon and McKinsey to create interactive digital content without any coding resources. Remote New Business Director Headway (new) Headway is building a new mental healthcare system, rewired for access and affordability. Provider Growth Manager Provider Growth Associate Customer Experience Associate LeagueApps (new) LeagueApps is the operating system and community for youth and local sports leaders. We power thousands of clubs, tournaments, leagues, camps, and facilities with a platform that reaches more than 10 million participants nationwide. Director, Talent Acquisition Platform Engineer Senior Backend Software Engineer Pinecone (new) The future of Search, an API call away. SRE: Infra & Tools Full Stack Software Engineer: Distributed Data Systems Stellar Health (new) Stellar Health is a healthcare technology company that helps providers and health insurance companies improve quality and financial performance by prompting providers and their practice staff with recommended value-based actions and real-time payments at the point of care. Senior Technical Recruiter Software Engineer Senior Software Engineer Grist Labs Love a good challenge? Try the Hack our bank puzzle! We are building Grist, a next-generation hybrid spreadsheet-database. You'll find here the unique combination of a small team in early stages of growth, and a well-developed product with great potential and much work ahead. Software Engineer The Muse Helping people succeed at their careers, and find meaningful jobs at the best companies Senior Front-End Engineer Senior Product Designer Account Executive Project Manager, Client Onboarding Ladders Ladders is the leading $100K+ professional community. We focus on the careers, professional growth, and office lifestyle of the top 25% of the workforce. With Ladders News, we provide the information and entertainment that our audience needs for lifelong career success, while Ladders Jobs is the largest source for $100K+ jobs in the US and Canada. Account Executive SEO Strategist Software Engineer III Lead Product Designer Director, Engineering Director, Technical Product Management BrainStation BrainStation is the global leader in digital skills training and workforce transformation, offering hands-on and outcomes-based courses in subjects such as Web Development, User Experience Design, Data Science and Digital Marketing. Educator, UX Design Educator, Data Science Educator, Web Development Business Development Representative Junior Sales Coordinator Coordinator, Customer Experience Coordinator, Talent Acquisition Manager, Community TripleLift TripleLift is a technology company rooted at the intersection of creative and media. We are an advertising platform where creative fits seamlessly into every experience across desktop, mobile and video. We help make advertising work for everyone. Advertising is important. We didn't invent advertising, but we are making advertising better. Designer Senior Software Engineer Product Manager — OTT Monetization Platform Capitolis Capitolis is the leading SaaS platform that drives financial resource optimization for capital markets. More than 50 financial institutions, as well as many hedge funds and asset managers, leverage Capitolis' technology to bring the best services to market and achieve high levels of return, while using the most appropriate amounts of their financial resources. Backed by world class investors, including Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, SVB Capital and S Capital, Capitolis is growing rapidly in our offices in New York, London and Tel Aviv. Director of Client Services Director of Financial Planning & Analysis Director of Demand Generation (NYC) Adoption Manager (NYC or London) FX Operations Analyst (NYC or London) Director of Product Management (NYC) Attentive Attentive is a personalized text messaging platform changing the way consumers interact with businesses and organizations. The company is one of the fastest growing startups in New York City and recently raised a $470 million Series E investment led by Coatue in March 2021. We work with 3,500+ of the most innovative brands like Coach, Urban Outfitters, CB2, Pura Vida, Lulus, and Jack in the Box. Lead PM Sales Development Representative Senior Client Strategy Manager Director of Client Strategy Mantra Health Mantra Health is a digital mental health company on a mission to improve access to quality mental healthcare for university students throughout the United States through the marriage of evidence-based therapy and psychiatry with software, data, and design. Product Designer Business Development Manager Lukka We are a SaaS solution that makes crypto accounting easy. We are a trusted, blockchain-native technology team that is passionate about digital asset technology. Our team is continuously collaborating and designing new products and initiatives to expand our market presence. Technology and customers are at the center of our universe. We dedicate our energy to learning, building, adapting, and achieving impactful results. Senior Front End Engineer Senior Software Engineer Software Test Engineer Account Executive Circle Circle was founded on the belief that blockchains and digital currency will rewire the global economic system, creating a fundamentally more open, inclusive, efficient and integrated world economy. Senior Software Engineer, Frontend Manager, Software Engineering Agilis Chemicals Transforming chemical industry with modern commerce technology Business Development Manager — Enterprise SaaS Marketing Director — Enterprise SaaS Logikcull.com Our mission: To democratize Discovery. Enterprise Account Executive The Dipp A personalized subscription site for pop culture's biggest fans. Director of Engineering Vestwell Retirement made easy. Senior Fullstack Engineer Hyperscience Hyperscience is the automation company that enables data to flow within and between the world's leading firms in financial services, insurance, healthcare and government markets. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in New York City with offices in Sofia, Bulgaria and London, UK, we've raised more than $50 million raised to date and are growing quickly. We welcome anyone who believes in big ideas and demonstrates a willingness to learn, and we're looking for exceptional talent to join our team and make a difference in our organization and for our customers. Machine Learning Engineer Braavo Braavo provides on demand funding for mobile apps and games. We offer a flexible and affordable funding alternative to the traditional sources of capital like working with a VC or bank. We're changing the way mobile entrepreneurs finance and grow their app businesses. Our predictive technology delivers on demand, performance-based funding, without dilution or personal guarantees. By providing non-dilutive, yet scalable alternatives to equity, we're helping founders retain control of their companies. Business Development Manager VP of Marketing Yogi At Yogi, we help companies decipher customer feedback, from ratings and reviews to surveys and support requests. Companies are inundated with feedback, but when it comes to turning this data into actionable business decisions, most companies fall short. That's where Yogi fits in. Full Stack Software Engineer Upper90 Upper90 is an alternative credit manager based in New York City that has deployed over $500m within 18 months of inception. Investor Relations Analyst Upscored UpScored is the only career site that uses data science to connect you with jobs suited specifically to you while automatically learning your career interests. Its AI-powered platform decreases job search time by 90%, showing you the jobs you're most likely to get (and want) in less than 2 minutes. Data Engineer Senior Frontend Developer Senior Backend Developer Frame.io Frame.io is a video review and collaboration platform designed to unify media assets and creative conversations in a user-friendly environment. Headquartered in New York City, Frame.io was developed by filmmakers, VFX artists and post production executives. Today, we support nearly 1 million media professionals at enterprises including Netflix, Buzzfeed, Turner, NASA & Vice Media. Frontend Engineering Manager Sr. Swift Engineer Lead Product Designer KeyMe NYC startup revolutionizing the locksmith industry with innovative robotics and mobile technology. Inbound Phone Sales Representative Systems Software Engineer Button Button's mission is to build a better way to do business in mobile. Enterprise Sales Director — New York Postlight Postlight is building an extraordinary team that loves to make great digital products — come join us! Full Stack Engineer Deliver your job listings directly to 50,000 members of the NYC tech community at an amazingly low cost. Find out how: jobpostings@techny.nyc ____________ NYC Tech Industry Virtual Event Calendar Contact Us for Free Listing of Your Web-based Events Send us your events to list (it's Free!) to: editor@techny.nyc Did You Miss Anything Important? Read Our TechNY Daily Past Editions TechNY Daily is distributed three times a week to 50,000 members of NYC's tech and digital media industry. 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"We are thrilled to have Blair Underwood join us for bbcon 2018," said Catherine LaCour, Blackbaud's chief marketing officer. "Each year bbcon convenes thousands of change agents to share the latest insights, trends and innovation—from fundraising and marketing strategies, to best practices for accounting and stewardship, to technology advancements and more. Blair's involvement in numerous charitable organizations genuinely reflects a passion to help good take over and attendees will benefit from his unique perspective as a public advocate and spokesperson, producer of the philanthropy-centered NBC series 'Give,' and philanthropist and co-founder of international nonprofit organization Artists for a New South Africa." A true multi-hyphenate, Blair Underwood is enjoying success in film, television and theatre as an actor, director and producer. Onscreen, he was most recently seen as a series regular on ABC series, Quantico. Prior to his role on "Quantico," Blair recurred on another hit ABC drama, "AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D." His past television credits feature several series, including "L.A. Law", "New Adventures of Old Christine," "In Treatment," "Dirty Sexy Money," and "The Event." His film credits include "Rules of Engagement," "Madea's Family Reunion" and "Full Frontal." He co-starred opposite Cicely Tyson in the Lifetime telefilm, "A Trip To Bountiful," based on the Tony award winning play. In 2012 he made his acclaimed Broadway debut in the iconic role of Stanley in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," for which he earned a 2012 Drama League Distinguished Performance Award nomination. He will next be seen in two feature films, both debuting on Netflix later in 2018: "The After Party," for writer/director Ian Edelman, and "Juanita," for director Clark Johnson, in which he stars opposite Alfre Woodard. Underwood also has several projects in the development pipeline as a director, including "Patch," an elevated genre feature based on a Gregg McBride script. In 2010 Underwood made his feature film directing debut with "The Bridge to Nowhere," which starred Ving Rhames, Danny Masterson, Bijou Phillips and Alex Breckenridge. Underwood is an Emmy Award winner (as producer of the philanthropy-centered NBC Saturday morning series, "Give"), a two-time Golden Globe Award nominee, and has been nominated for 17 NAACP Image Awards (three wins). He won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word as co-narrator of "An Inconvenient Truth" and is a newly minted member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Underwood received the Humanitarian Award for his work with the Los Angeles chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association. He co-founded Artists for a New South Africa and also served as a spokesperson for YouthAIDS. Underwood is on the Board of Governors of Love Our Children USA, and appeared in a public service announcement for the Fulfillment Fund. "Blackbaud's bbcon 2018 conference is an inspiring event that unites thousands of people who share a commitment to using technology to make a powerful impact in the world," said Underwood. "I'm honored to join this important event and look forward to trading stories with this inspiring community of professionals who dedicate their day jobs to making the world a better place." Attendees will also have access to dedicated content for various roles and markets—from nonprofits and arts and cultural organizations to faith communities to education institutions, healthcare organizations, foundations, companies and more. "Data, catalyzing the power of the individual and true collaboration—we believe these three factors will drive momentum in the social economy, ultimately making it possible for organizations and individuals working for good to do so more effectively," LaCour added. "We are excited to focus on these themes throughout the conference so attendees leave even more prepared to tackle the world's biggest problems." For more information or to register, visit www.bbconference.com. Follow the conference news on Twitter with #bbcon or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/blackbaud. Click to tweet: Award-Winning Actor and Humanitarian @BlairUnderwood to Headline Premier Tech Gathering for Social Good #bbcon @blackbaud https://blkb.co/2KS6UYA About Blackbaud Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world's leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community—nonprofits, foundations, companies, education institutions, healthcare organizations and individual change agents—Blackbaud connects and empowers organizations to increase their impact through cloud software, services, expertise, and data intelligence. The Blackbaud portfolio is tailored to the unique needs of vertical markets, with solutions for fundraising and CRM, marketing, advocacy, peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate social responsibility, school management, ticketing, grantmaking, financial management, payment processing, and analytics. Serving the industry for more than three decades, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com. Media Contact Nicole McGougan Public Relations Manager 843-654-3307 media@blackbaud.com Forward-looking Statements Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Although Blackbaud attempts to be accurate in making these forward-looking statements, it is possible that future circumstances might differ from the assumptions on which such statements are based. In addition, other important factors that could cause results to differ materially include the following: general economic risks; uncertainty regarding increased business and renewals from existing customers; continued success in sales growth; management of integration of acquired companies and other risks associated with acquisitions; risks associated with successful implementation of multiple integrated software products; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; risks related to our dividend policy and share repurchase program, including potential limitations on our ability to grow and the possibility that we might discontinue payment of dividends; risks relating to restrictions imposed by the credit facility; risks associated with management of growth; lengthy sales and implementation cycles, particularly in larger organization; technological changes that make our products and services less competitive; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in the SEC filings for Blackbaud, copies of which are available free of charge at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or upon request from Blackbaud's investor relations department. All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud, Inc. SOURCE Blackbaud Related Links http://www.blackbaud.com

News: VentureBeat
Site: venturebeat.com

Back in December, when AWS launched its new machine learning IDE, SageMaker Studio, we wrote up a "hot-off-the-presses" review. At the time, we felt the platform fell short, but we promised to publish an update after working with AWS to get more familiar with the new capabilities. This is that update. Pain points and solutions in the machine learning pipeline When Amazon launched SageMaker Studio, they made clear the pain points they were aiming to solve: "The machine learning development workflow is still very iterative, and is challenging for developers to manage due to the relative immaturity of ML tooling." The machine learning workflow — from data ingestion, feature engineering, and model selection to debugging, deployment, monitoring, and maintenance, along with all the steps in between — can be like trying to tame a wild animal. To solve this challenge, big tech companies have built their own machine learning and big data platforms for their data scientists to use: Uber has Michelangelo, Facebook (and likely Instagram and WhatsApp) has FBLearner flow, Google has TFX, and Netflix has both Metaflow and Polynote (the latter has been open sourced). For smaller organizations that cannot roll out their own infrastructure, a number of players have emerged in proprietary and productized form, as evidenced by Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms: These include platforms like Microsoft Azure, H20, DataRobot, and Google Cloud Platform (to name a few). These platforms are intended for data scientists and adjacent roles, such as data engineers and ML engineers, and span all types of data work, from data cleaning, wrangling, and visualization, to machine learning. Amazon SageMaker Studio was the latest to join this fray. What SageMaker Studio Offers So what does Sagemaker Studio offer? According to Amazon, "SageMaker [including Studio] is a fully managed service that removes the heavy lifting from each step of the machine learning process." The tools are impressive and do remove several aspects of the heavy lifting: The IDE meets data scientists where they are by using the intuitive interface of JupyterLab, a common open notebook-based IDE for data science in Python. Standardizing on what are rapidly becoming (or have already become) the standard tools for data professionals allows everyone to leverage the wide range of open-source tooling available in the ecosystem. This seems to be an area where AWS is making a solid commitment, having hired two major JupyterLab contributors, including Brian Granger, co-lead of Project Jupyter itself). Sagemaker notebooks can be run elastically, which means data scientists pay only for compute time used, instead of for how long they have the notebook open. This makes for a far more cost efficient workflow for data scientists. Elastic notebooks also allow heavy-duty machine learning workloads to complete quickly by rapidly scaling up and down compute infrastructure to meet demand, all with minimal configuration. SageMaker Studio provides a framework to track and compare model performance on validation sets across different models, architectures, and hyperparameters (this beats doing it in spreadsheets!). The formalization of machine learning model building as a set of experiments is worth focusing on: You can find countless posts on how much trouble data scientists have tracking machine learning experiments. It is exciting to be able to view ML experiments on a leaderboard, ranked by a metric of choice, although we need to be careful since optimizing for single metrics often results in algorithmic bias. The debugger provides real-time, graphical monitoring of common issues that data scientists encounter while training models (exploding and vanishing gradients, loss function not decreasing), as well as the ability to build your own rules. This removes both a practical and a cognitive burden, freeing data scientists from the need to constantly monitor these common issues as SageMaker Studio will send alerts. The platform also includes an automatic model building system, Autopilot. All you need to do is provide the training data, and SageMaker performs all the feature engineering, algorithm selection, and hyperparameter tuning automatically (similar to DataRobot). An exciting feature is the automatic generation of notebooks containing all the resulting models that you can play with and build upon. Amazon claims the automated models can serve either as baselines (for scientists wanting to build more sophisticated models) or as models to be productionized directly. The latter may be problematic, particularly as users are not able to select the optimization metric (they can only provide the training data). We all know about the horrors of proxies for optimization metrics and the potential for "rampant racism in decision-making software." When we asked AWS about this, a spokesperson told us: "As with all machine learning, customers should always closely examine training data and evaluate models to ensure they are performing as intended, especially in critical use cases such as healthcare or financial services." The model hosting and deployment allows data scientists to get their models up and running in production directly from SageMaker notebook, and provides an HTTPS endpoint that you can ping with new data to get predictions. The ability to monitor data drift in new data over time (that is, to interrogate how representative of new data the training data is) is important and has some promise, especially when it comes to spotting potential bias. The built-in features are limited to basic summary statistics but there are ways for data scientists to build their own custom metrics by providing either custom pre-processing or post-processing scripts and using a pre-built analysis container or by bringing their own custom container. These capabilities are impressive and do remove some of the heavy lifting associated with building, deploying, maintaining, and monitoring machine learning models in production. But do they collectively reduce all the grunt work, hacking, and iterative cycles that comprise much of the work of ML data scientists? Does SageMaker Studio deliver on its promise? In contrast to data science platforms such as DataRobot and H20.ai, SageMaker takes a more "training wheels off" approach. It's biggest proponents have mostly been either data scientists who have serious software engineering chops, or teams that have DevOps, engineering, infrastructural, and data science talent. Another way to frame the question is: Does SageMaker Studio allow lone data scientists with less engineering background to productively enter the space of building ML models on Amazon? After spending days with Studio, we think the answer is no. As noted above, the tools are powerful but, as with so much of AWS, the chaos of the documentation (or lack thereof) and the woefully difficult UX/UI (to compare ML experiments, click through to experiments tab, highlight multiple experiments, control-shift something something without any clear indication in the UI itself) mean the overhead of using products that are still actively evolving is too high. This is why AWS hosts so many workshops, with and without breakout sessions, chalk talks, webinars, and events such as re:Invent. All parts of SageMaker Studio require external help and constant hacking away. For example, there's a notebook with an xgboost example that we were able to replicate, but after searching for documentation, we still couldn't figure out how to get scikit-learn (a wildly popular ML learning package) up and running. When, in preparation for writing this piece, we emailed our contact at Amazon to ask for directions to relevant documentation, they explained that the product is still "in preview." The best products teach you how to use them without the need for additional seminars. Data scientists (and technical professionals in general) greatly prefer to get started with a good tutorial rather than wait for a seminar to come through town. SageMaker Studio is a step in the right direction, but it has a ways to go to fulfill its promise. There's a reason it isn't in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning Platforms. Like AWS, it still requires serious developer chops and software engineering skills and it's still a long way from making data scientists themselves production ready and meeting them where they are. The real (unmet) potential of SageMaker Studio and the new features of SageMaker lie in efficiency gains and cost reductions for both data scientists who are already comfortable with DevOps and teams that already have strong software engineering capabilities. Hugo Bowne-Anderson is Head of Data Science Evangelism and VP of Marketing at Coiled is a data strategy consultant at DataCamp, and has taught data science topics at Yale University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, conferences such as SciPy, PyCon, and ODSC, and with organizations such as Data Carpentry. Tianhui Michael Li is president at Pragmatic Institute and the founder and president of The Data Incubator, a data science training and placement firm. Previously, he headed monetization data science at Foursquare and has worked at Google, Andreessen Horowitz, J.P. Morgan, and D.E. Shaw.

News: Newslookup.com - Tech Wire
Site: www.newslookup.com

News: Bank Technology News
Site: news.google.com

Here's a look at how tech companies across the nation are giving back during COVID-19. In a world where lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders restrict physical movement, digital technology is filling the void to keep households connected, supplied, entertained and informed. But amid the increased demand for digital products and services — and the logistical challenges associated with a massive work-from-home transition — many tech companies have not forgotten those who are struggling right now. We asked leaders at 100 startups and larger tech companies across the United States to describe how they're giving back to their local communities during this uncertain season, and the responses offer a fine example of our industry's wealth of ingenuity. There are many ways in which successful businesses can offer support when society needs it. Among the responses listed here, we find data science companies offering their services to health organizations, fintech startups helping small businesses navigate the federal stimulus package and wellness apps helping doctors and nurses on the pandemic's front lines look after their own mental health. Meanwhile, other companies are supporting food banks, replacing school lunches and donating personal protective equipment. Do you know of a team or company that's going above and beyond right now? Share the love using #UnitedWeTech. Jessica Chang, WeeCare Jessica Chang, CEO aNd Co-founder at WeeCare In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? WeeCare is supporting the community by assisting families in finding a temporary childcare solution in a "Fever-Free" WeeCare home daycare, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. WeeCare is offering essential workers full access to WeeCare's team of childcare experts, who are removing parents' stress in finding childcare and quickly placing their child in a WeeCare home daycare. We are also collaborating with local government agencies and allowing them to utilize WeeCare technology to streamline the process of finding childcare by giving them access to a childcare provider's availability in real time. Additionally, we have developed several features for home daycare providers to create a safer environment for the families they are serving, such as a process to verify their home daycare is fever-free and implementing virtual daycare tours and daily health checks. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Currently, we are finding childcare for essential workers at no cost. If we cannot find them a spot in a WeeCare home daycare, we will proactively locate a daycare outside of our network that has availability and can accommodate their child. Childcare providers who are not part of our network can now join the WeeCare platform at no cost to their current families and take advantage of our upgraded features, which includes access to our educational program. Finally, we are working around the clock and offering 24/7 support to ensure we can quickly service both families and providers. Janis Hoyt, The Honest Company Janis Hoyt, Chief People Officer at The Honest Company In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? As our community continues to be affected by COVID-19, many families are left without access to their everyday basic essentials. To meet families' immediate needs, Honest has committed to donating 3 million diapers, 30,000 packs of wipes and 20,000 personal care products this year to our charity partner, Baby2Baby — with 100,000 diapers and 100,000 wipes immediately delivered in March. These essential items are being distributed throughout family resource centers, homeless shelters, health clinics and Head Start centers to families impacted by this outbreak. In addition, Honest is matching employees' donations — up to $500 per person — toward the nonprofit of their choice. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We are continually assessing the short-term and long-term effects that COVID-19 will have on our community and the subsequent needs of our charity partners. Our increased charitable giving commitments not only reflect what we can do right now but also how we will continue our support throughout the year. In addition, we are exploring ways to connect our consumer base to our charity partners to help us amplify our giving initiatives. This year, we will continue to focus our efforts to ensure we are leading with compassion, serving as a reliable resource for our charity partner, Baby2Baby, and making a difference in the Los Angeles community. Natan Linder, Tulip Natan Linder, CEO at Tulip In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? At this critical moment, we're offering our software and services for free to all manufacturers contributing to the fight against COVID-19. We believe Tulip can be instrumental in ramping up production, bringing new therapies to market and helping manufacturers retool their production lines to build products that help fight COVID-19. We're also building and sharing free applications that can be used by hospitals and factories on the frontline, such as an app that screens visitors and employees for symptoms and displays their travel history. Finally, we're working with nonprofits in the open-source manufacturing community and providing Tulip for free as the information system for distributed production and supply chain logistics. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We immediately saw that the manufacturing community — our customers — would have a critical role to play in the fight against COVID-19. Our greatest gift right now is how we can provide free and fast support, so we rapidly refocused our resources, energy and time to help the manufacturing community. We've been working overtime to help deploy our software to companies and organizations across the United States, and I'm proud to say that Tulip is helping manufacturers build and deliver essential medical supplies like masks to communities from Seattle to Boston. Matt Kalish, DraftKings Matt Kalish, North American President at DraftKings How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? DraftKings started a charity initiative called #DKRally to mobilize sports fans everywhere to band together in support of our communities during this global public health emergency. In the spirit of triumphing over adversity, the #DKRally initiative has committed up to $1 million to United Way, with an initial donation of $500,000. For every rally cap photo and hashtag shared on social media, DraftKings is donating $1 to United Way's COVID-19 relief fund. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We remain committed to our primary corporate social responsibility initiative, Tech for Heroes, which provides military veterans and their spouses with the high-tech skills they need to begin a new career path in tech or up-skill in their current role. In 2019, the company committed nearly $1 million to support the veteran community and other organizations, but given the current circumstances, it was important to be responsive to the immediate needs facing our country and communities. Working with incredible organizations like United Way allows DraftKings to diversify and complement the way we engage with the communities we are a part of, as we are always in search of ways to be a strong corporate citizen. Kristin De Simone, Thrive Market Kristin De Simone, Mission Manager at Thrive Market How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? For more than a month now, Thrive Market has been focused on one thing: getting our members the products they need to keep their families safe and healthy during this unprecedented time. The coronavirus crisis has entered an even more serious phase over the last two weeks. Millions of families are facing mounting hardships, from lost wages to unforeseen childcare needs to potentially crippling medical expenses. On March 16, we launched the Thrive Market COVID-19 Relief Fund and are providing grocery stipends and free Thrive Market memberships to any family facing health or financial hardships due to COVID-19. In just two weeks, our member community has raised over $80,000 through donations at checkout. Our plan is to match those donations, dollar for dollar, up to a total donation of $200,000. We've currently deployed over $180,000 in grocery stipends for those in need. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? The COVID-19 relief initiative is not uncharted territory for us. Since 2015, we've donated every dollar collected at checkout each month to the shopping budgets of Thrive Gives members, disaster relief efforts, food access and veteran aid programs and a range of fully vetted partner organizations that align with our mission. Over the last few years, we've mobilized our member community for similar relief efforts including hurricanes Katrina, Michael and Florence and wildfires in California, the Amazon and Australia. We also supported those impacted by last year's government shutdown and donated to migrant relief efforts at the U.S. border. At this point, we're able to turn these types of campaigns around and activate our community really quickly. Time and time again, our members have stepped up in a huge way. This time is no different. Their generosity continues to inspire us, and together we've already been able to support over 1,000 families in need during this really challenging time. Stacey Kraft, Enova Stacey Kraft, Chief People Officer at Enova In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? As a Chicago company, we believe it's important to support organizations helping with COVID-19 relief efforts where our team members work and live. Enova will contribute a total of $500,000 to the Chicago Community COVID-19 Response Fund and the Chicago Small Business Resiliency Fund. These funds are doing critical work to help ensure our neighbors most impacted by COVID-19 have the resources they need to get through this crisis. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Now, more than ever, we want to help our team members make an impact by supporting causes they care about. That's why Enova is expanding its "You Decide, Enova Gives" program. Based on nominations from Enova team members and a companywide vote, Enova will make a $10,000 donation to two organizations providing COVID-19 relief. We're also encouraging team members to make use of our charitable match program, which matches employee donations up to $250. Neil Frye, Alto Pharmacy Neil Frye, Chief People Officer at Alto Pharmacy In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? As a member of the healthcare community, the team at Alto is leveraging our courier delivery fleet model to bring much-needed supplies to our colleagues working on the front lines. We launched a personal protective equipment (PPE) donation program in the San Francisco Bay Area last week and hope to expand it to other communities in the coming weeks. In just over one week of coordinating PPE donations to hospitals, we've run more than 60 individual donation pick-ups, accounting for more than 1,700 masks, 11,000 gloves and various other supplies. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Alto is most successful when our communities are healthy, safe and thriving. We see this moment as a chance to connect our resources and operations infrastructure with problems worth solving — for example, connecting private supplies of PPE with healthcare organizations. We'll continue to look and listen for other ways that we can help our colleagues in healthcare and the communities that we serve. Jason Wilk, Dave Inc. Jason Wilk, CEO at Dave Inc. How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We're in an unprecedented time that has created so many challenges, leading us to create new ways to help our customers and the broader community in Los Angeles and beyond. We have adapted our "side hustle" feature — which connects people with jobs — to include more jobs that can be done from home like Swagbucks and SurveyJunkie. Between March 15 and 29, 70,000 Dave customers turned to the feature for remote work opportunities, 30,000 of which are based in Los Angeles. Additionally, Dave has donated $250,000 to Feeding America's COVID-19 Response Fund, which will help to address hunger caused by the pandemic at Los Angeles food banks and across the country. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? COVID-19 has caused many Americans to lose their source of income. Coupled with the closures of most schools — which many children rely on for regular meals — Feeding America expects food insecurity to rise in the coming weeks. To address these concerns for Dave's customers and the broader U.S. community, Dave is expanding its existing partnership with Feeding America through its donation to their COVID-19 Fund. This is a continuation of Dave's ongoing relationship with Feeding America, which provides a "meal match" where Dave donates a meal to Feeding America in return for certain actions within the app, such as referring a friend. Dan Van De Voorde, Strata Decision Technology Dan Van De Voorde, Director of People at Strata Decision Technology In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Strata is on a mission to help heal healthcare. Helping solve food insecurity has always been a cause we care deeply about, as it has a direct impact on the health and wellness of our communities. Our team is rallying around one of our partners, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, with a virtual food drive to bring meals to our neighbors in need during these uncertain times. On a typical day, 1 in 5 people in Chicago do not know where their next meal is coming from. Layer in these extraordinary circumstances, and families across our city are in desperate need of help. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Normally, we would head on over to the GCFD headquarters to repack food or host a drive in our office. Today, we are fortunate enough to take those efforts virtual. Our team can shop online for what they'd like to donate and together, we will deliver 100,000 meals to those who need it most. Additionally, in an effort to support the communities our customers serve across the country, Strata has made a contribution to Feeding America, the national organization that works with local food banks to provide meals to those in need all over the United States. On the healthcare front, Strata has contributed to the World Health Organization and the American Red Cross to support their response efforts to keep our communities safe around the world. Joel Milne, RepairSmith Joel Milne, CEO at RepairSmith How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Our team at RepairSmith is rallying to support the communities we serve in a big way. We're donating $100,000 in free "no-contact car repair" to people who lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic and those on the front lines, like government workers, service workers, delivery drivers, healthcare professionals, employees of grocery stores and pharmacies and volunteers. We believe it's simply the right thing to do to help relieve financial burden for the heroes and victims of the pandemic — and to help essential workers get where they need to go safely. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Giving back is something we've been passionate about since RepairSmith was founded. When we began to see the need for community support on all fronts in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, we knew we had to step in to help. While we could have never truly planned for this program given how quickly the outbreak intensified, our team did an incredible job of conceptualizing the initiative and mobilizing to make it happen in just a matter of days. This is RepairSmith's largest philanthropic initiative to date and one that has already begun to make a meaningful impact on the community. We have been inundated with applications since launching the program in late March and plan to support hundreds of deserving neighbors over the next few months. Frances Cooperman, Via Frances Cooperman, Chief Marketing Officer at Via In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? We've quickly adapted our technology and are leaning on our operational expertise to help provide innovative transportation solutions for essential workers and for the delivery of goods and services. Right now, communities have an urgent need to transport essential employees — healthcare, government and delivery workers — to and from work in the safest and quickest way possible. We're working with partners to adapt their existing transit infrastructure to meet the needs of their communities in this critical moment, whether that's getting medical workers to hospitals faster and more safely or helping to efficiently deliver essential goods like groceries and prescriptions. For example in Germany, Via has an existing collaboration with Berlin's transit agency, BVG, and runs the largest public sector on-demand transit deployment in the world. In response to COVID-19, we've extended our operating zones even farther into the city, covering more than 10 hospitals, in order to provide a fully free, dynamic service for essential healthcare workers. In Malta, as in other places around the world, social distancing has led to challenges in accessing food, medicine and other essential services. Working with our local partners, we've adapted our existing service to allow grocery stores to send goods through our app. Locally, we know New Yorkers rely on Via for affordable transportation, and while shared rides are paused to keep everyone safe, we've discounted private rides by 20 percent to help those who do need to travel. Rich Pierson, Headspace Rich Pierson, Co-Founder & CEO at Headspace How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We're taking several steps to help, including providing free Headspace subscriptions to U.S. healthcare providers working in public health settings through 2020. Our healthcare system is facing immense pressure amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and we're seeing incredible stress, anxiety and burnout among healthcare workers who are on the front lines of this crisis. While this is currently only accessible to U.S.-based healthcare providers and employees of the NHS in the U.K., we're working with global NGOs, health systems and government officials to quickly establish ways to uniquely identify healthcare providers in countries around the world. We're unlocking a free, specially-curated "weathering the storm" collection of meditation and mindfulness content in the Headspace app for everyone around the world and sharing our "Headspace for Work" tools and resources. As experts in workplace mental health, we understand the profound and lasting impact this global health crisis has had on employees and their families everywhere. We also know the impact on teachers and caregivers in light of school closures and social distancing measures. Headspace offers free access to K-12 teachers, school administrators and supporting staff in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. And to help guide students and their parents through this tough time, we're also sharing tools and tips for talking mindfully with young people to help educators guide kids and their parents through this public health crisis. "Headspace for Educators" is our flagship social impact program that has been in place since 2018 and will be here to support educators indefinitely. This is our small way of helping people around the world find some calm and compassion for themselves and those around them in a truly trying time. The most significant benefit of meditation is its ability to help you rest in uncertainty. Of course, our lives are always uncertain, and it's at times like these when we feel it more than ever. We hope these small gestures can help all of us look after the health and happiness of our minds as well as the people around us. Marcela Sapone, Hello Alfred Marcela Sapone, Co-Founder & CEO at Hello Alfred In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Even under normal conditions, supporting local businesses is a big focus for us. We've always made a point to partner with local grocers, dry cleaners and retailers to fulfill our customers' requests, but now we're taking even more care to prioritize keeping purchasing power in the community. At a time when people are outsourcing food and supplies orders to big-box online retailers, our team is supporting local stores and service providers by shopping for groceries, supplies, medication and even liquor at home, in our own neighborhoods. The Amazons and Instacarts of the world will survive this, but the bodegas and local shops won't without our continued support. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We quickly established the Alfred Local Workers Assistance Fund to benefit impacted members of the workforce who are struggling to make ends meet, whether they've suffered layoffs, reduced hours or closures. We've increased our service fee by 1.5 percent in direct support and are waiving the cost of service for all new members in favor of a $25 weekly donation to the fund instead. We've also invited our partners as well as our own team to contribute. Our team members are all W-2, fully insured workers, but we realize that many others in our communities are not so fortunate. We've always championed the power of human help, and when could our support be more important than right now? Eric Carroll-Stonehewer, Castor Eric Carroll-Stonehewer, Talent Acquisition Partner at Castor In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? As a leading medical research tool, it turns out we can do a lot right now, and, frankly, we have a moral obligation to do so. With that being said, Castor has joined the global fight against the coronavirus by making our research data capture system available for free to all COVID-19 research projects. As of March 23, more than 60 COVID-19 research projects are now running on Castor. We have also developed ready-to-use eCRFs — electronic case report forms — based on the World Health Organization standard CRFs to help researchers start their study or registry in less than an hour. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Very recently, Castor decided to join the climate change fight. Why? Because the number one issue on the WHO's list of threats to global health is air pollution and climate change. Castor will be planting 10 trees for each study that goes live on our platform, whether it is a paid or free study. With recent events in mind, we have also used the full force of our talented in-house product and engineering teams to develop an app that supports COVID-19 research. Sara Itucas, Legalpad Sara Itucas, Co-Founder & COO at Legalpad In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Innovation is integral to helping us survive this pandemic. Our team recognizes the role immigrants play in developing that culture of innovation, and since they comprise 19 percent of the front-line workforce, we can't afford to turn our backs on them. With all the developments around immigration policy and travel restrictions, our team is determined to provide clarity, resources and an action plan for people in our international community. We're providing free resources to our community, including updates on immigration and travel news alerts on our website and via email notifications, regular webinars and office hours about what new immigration policy updates mean, and consultations for people who need guidance on next steps regarding travel and immigration compliance during COVID-19. We've also opened up a new visa service for permanent residency (the EB-2 green card) which will enable us to support a wider swathe of people. By doing this, we're carving out more options for stability in immigration status. Many people don't know that they can self-petition for certain green cards, and we are here to make that knowledge accessible for our community. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Providing options, clarity and actionable next steps is the best way we can support our international community right now. We're offering more of our services for free and educating immigrants on every possible path they have for stability in a time of uncertainty. To all the immigrant entrepreneurs out there: We're here for you so that you can better support others in what you do best. We need you now more than ever. Michael Amori, Virtualitics Michael Amori, Co-Founder & CEO at Virtualitics In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Throughout this crisis, I've been amazed at how well our company has responded to unprecedented challenges. We're fortunate to have a great team of Caltech-trained engineers and data scientists who are giving back to the community by analyzing data related to the coronavirus. Virtualitics is partnering with a large government entity and an LA-based hospital network to better prepare and plan for local outbreaks. Specifically, our team has developed AI-based predictive models that forecast short-term infections at a local level. We're proud to be a part of this fight. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? The COVID-19 crisis has pushed our entire staff to think about how we could give back more during this time of need. One of my favorite initiatives is that we've been granting complimentary use of our flagship software, Virtualitics Immersive Platform, to users in the healthcare field working with coronavirus data. Through machine learning, our tool allows users to understand and visualize large amounts of data very rapidly. This empowers users to make better data-driven decisions faster, at a moment when time to insights is critical. Vishwas Prabhakara, Digit Vishwas Prabhakara, COO at Digit In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Digit is doing everything we can to help people during this strange and difficult time. On March 26, we released a coronavirus relief hub, for members and non-members alike, with links to helpful and pertinent information on current employment opportunities and expanded unemployment benefits, paid and family sick leave, how to protect your home and utilities, how to manage debt and taxes and general acts of kindness to help people feel better. The hub also includes some helpful pointers on how to use Digit to protect and secure your finances by adjusting automatic savings levels, preventing overdrafts and keeping users generally informed on the state of their financial health. Digit has been updating the relief hub and plans to do so regularly to provide a single source for some of the most important updates, tools and resources people need during this tough time. The Digit team is working hard to expand how it is helping people weather the financial storm and will continue to share updates. Emily Jansen, Pushnami Emily Jansen, Director of Marketing at Pushnami In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Every month, Pushnami donates a portion of our revenue to local nonprofits. Last week, we donated $10,000 to the Central Texas Food Bank, which will provide meals for up to 40,000 Central Texans. We've also made sure to maintain the memberships for our employee health & wellness perks (like our crossfit and yoga classes) even though many of these local businesses are closed. We made our marketing platform 100 percent completely free for the next six months. Any online business — especially those based in Austin — is able to use our platform for free with no contracts or credit card required. Our product helps drive more connections and engagement, which is something we all could use a little more of right now. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We've increased our charitable contribution program this month, most recently donating $10,000 to the Central Texas Food Bank. We've always focused on people-first organizations, and this month is no different. London Lee, Twitter London Lee, Public Policy & Philanthropy at Twitter In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? In response to COVID-19, we are actively engaging our service, employees and corporate giving resources to support local communities. This includes contributing in-kind donations, launching employee giving campaigns and developing remote volunteer opportunities such as virtual mock interviews for local job seekers. Globally, we have also distributed pro bono advertising credits to help our partners launch meaningful campaigns around COVID-19 and announced a pledge of $1 million to the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Women's Media Foundation. We are committed to serving our communities year-round. Right now, we are working closely with our partners to understand and respond to the acute, ever-changing needs. Brandy PHam, PLANOLY Brandy Pham, Founder & Chief Creative Officer at PLANOLY In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? To lend relief to the city we call home and its small business community that we hold dear, we've recently announced Designing Change, PLANOLY's philanthropic initiative. We are launching it with the Local Love Grant – awarding two Austin-based small businesses $5,000 each to help relieve financial hardships due to COVID-19. The winners of the Local Love Grant will also receive a year's worth of free PLANOLY and one-on-one mentoring sessions with a social marketing expert. How have you adapted, expanded and changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We originally planned to announce our first small business grant for female and non-binary small business owners and entrepreneurs at SXSW this year. Since the change in events, our team quickly pivoted our grant to help local small businesses combat financial hardships due to COVID-19. Moreover, given the time-sensitivity that these citywide closures place on small businesses, we accelerated our Local Love Grant application and review process to reflect the urgency businesses are facing today. Matthew Gee, BrightHIve Matthew Gee, CEO at BrightHive In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We decided the best way we could help not only local communities, but cities and states across the U.S., was to assemble a group of data superfriends — the COVID-19 Data Response Team — to provide pro bono services for responsible data sharing and essential help to fill gaps in critical digital infrastructure. The Data Response Team is helping cities and states across the country publish real-time updates on thousands of open child care centers for critical care providers. We're helping states provide real-time information on which industries and occupations are hit the hardest by layoffs and where the out of work can find new work now, and we're helping medical apps responsibly share COVID-19 treatment data with researchers who are searching for effective treatments. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? BrightHive staff are devoting a portion of our time and energy during workdays and after hours to serving others in our own nerdy way throughout this crisis. We aren't charging for this. Government, social service and nonprofit organizations get technical resources and pro bono services to help them create a Data Trust Agreement that allows them to responsibly and effectively share data with one another to better coordinate their efforts. It's the kind of work we do on a regular basis, but we are focusing our attention on organizations who are responding to COVID-19 and giving the support for free. Tom Penque, Definitive Healthcare Tom Penque, Chief Talent Officer at Definitive Healthcare In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Over the past three weeks, we have been donating our data to branches of the government, universities and organizations to drive publicly accessible solutions as fast as possible to the market. This type of engagement is already a hallmark of our company culture but is particularly important during this time of crisis. Most recently, we developed a COVID-19 capacity predictor map, a free dashboard that indicates to government and healthcare leaders where, and when, crucial resources like ICU hospital beds and mechanical ventilators should be deployed. We also partnered with one of our long-term clients, Esri, to develop an interactive mapped data service to enable analysis, visualization and tracking of U.S. hospital bed capacity, and potential areas of geographic risk, during the COVID-19 outbreak. Through a referral from another client, we are providing our ICU bed data to a consulting firm that is helping the Department of Defense deploy the Army Corp of Engineers to build and staff hospitals across the United States based on a combination of need — projected infections — and supply of existing beds. We've also been working with GraphiteRx to develop a website to help hospitals obtain emergency supplies from alternative sources, such as foreign medical suppliers, domestic non-medical manufacturers and other large organizations. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Definitive Healthcare is well-known for its DefinitiveCares community service outreach program, which gives employees paid time off to volunteer at local charities during work hours and rewards participation with additional paid vacation days. In 2019 alone, we contributed 3,404 working hours and $193,500 to 41 charitable organizations. During this critical time, many charitable organizations are closed to in-person volunteers, so we've turned toward supporting virtual opportunities for employees. We are working with our partners that focus on eldercare and education to support them remotely. We are also sharing additional options for virtual volunteering with our employees, including making masks for healthcare workers and creating activity care packages for students or adults who are currently homebound. Sean Brown, YCharts Sean Brown, President & CEO at YCharts In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? When we first learned about the stresses caused by the coronavirus pandemic on our local communities of Chicago and New York City, we started "virtual food drives" for the Greater Chicago Food Depository and The Food Bank for New York City, and set our goal of donating at least 3,000 meals to those in need. Additionally, each employee was given a stipend with part of its intended use being to support local businesses. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? In addition to our "virtual food drives," we've devised a strategy to provide access to our platform to financial professionals who need investment research and client communications tools while working from home. With many investment firms being forced out of the office, it strains their ability to serve their own clients — the millions of individuals like us with savings or nest-eggs that have been adversely affected. By implementing our "work from home support" strategy, we've provided hundreds of financial professionals with the tools they need to keep their clients informed and continue to do their jobs successfully. Michaela Rollings, Hive Michaela Rollings, Senior Manager of Brand & Content at Hive In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? We're giving back in two ways. First, we've got a company-wide giving initiative to One Million Masks. Hive is matching each employee donation dollar for dollar up to $2,500. We're also about to kick off an initiative called Hive Heroes: The Million Dollar Challenge. Our goal there is to donate one dollar for every person using Hive in 2020, totaling $1 million in donations. The cool component of our giving there is that each Hive user will be able to select the charity they want to donate to from a list of charities, which includes a COVID-19 relief fund. We're excited to kick off the Hive Heroes Million Dollar Challenge in April 2020. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Our internal donation and matching program was initiated because, as an NYC-based tech company, we were shocked and saddened by the limited amount of masks provided to healthcare workers in the city. This initiative was one of the ways we could give back to the city and the healthcare workers fighting so valiantly against this virus. Hive Heroes has been in the works for several months, but we've pivoted that initiative to include a COVID-19 relief fund in light of recent events. William Chinburg, Mint House William Chinburg, Head of Talent at Mint House In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Coronavirus has impacted nearly every sector of the economy, and as a hotel tech company, our own business has taken a significant hit. At the same time, we recognize that our core product, a tech-enabled boutique hotel, can be put to good use in such chaotic times. For that reason, we've made our rooms available at cost to anyone impacted by the virus, including students stranded due to school shutdowns and traveling professionals who are temporarily displaced. Everyone is dealing with a different set of circumstances during this crisis, and our hope is that Mint House can help people weather such an uncertain time in their lives. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Mint House is a small company, but we believe this contribution will make a difference for people in need. We also know that sooner or later this crisis is going to be over. This current program should provide a framework for future initiatives to come. Alfred Johnson, Mobilize Alfred Johnson, Co-Founder & CEO at Mobilize In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? This week, we launched a program to provide 501(c)(3) organizations with free access to our platform for their COVID-19 relief work. The program aims to connect the thousands in the community looking for opportunities to make a difference with organizations that need the support. In the first few days alone we've got several organizations up and running, including a regional Meals on Wheels that is organizing meal deliveries and telephone outreach to senior citizens and No Vet Alone, which works to combat suicide risk among veterans and first responders. We've also invested considerable time and provided staff support to help the other organizations on our platform transition their organizing and supporter engagement efforts online so as to not lose momentum during this critical time. We're creating webinars and how-to guides to quickly upskill organizers on working virtually and adapting our product to better serve virtual events. David H. Dancer, Inspire David H. Dancer, Chief Marketing Officer at Inspire How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Giving back to the communities we serve is more important now than ever. We are fortunate to be able to partner with our apparel vendor who has converted one of their facilities to produce protective masks. We will be delivering more than 10,000 protective masks to healthcare systems in both Santa Monica and Los Angeles, where we service our customers and where our employees reside. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We've partnered with our friends at Omaze to raise $50,000 to support several organizations that are on the front lines of COVID-19 relief efforts. Our employees and customers want to know how they can contribute, so we are engaging them to spread the word to their networks to maximize our impact. Kristina Paiz, Elastic Kristina Paiz, Elastic Cares Program Manager at Elastic In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? With schools closed and plans disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, we can help students figure out what to do next. Many are unsure what this will mean for graduation and what the workforce will be like in the coming months. Career Village is a way for us to connect with students, giving them a sense of stability and reassurance. To do our part, Elastic Cares set up a volunteering opportunity with Career Village on April 1 to encourage Elasticians to share their knowledge of the tech industry and help train the next generation of tech professionals. Elastic Cares set up a one-hour, live Q&A session on April 1 that was free for students to access. Actually, it was more than one session — advice was given in several time zones, including in North and South America, the EU and the Asia Pacific regions. Career Village has given our Elasticians the opportunity to connect with students and give them a sense of stability and reassurance in these volatile times. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We're also releasing free and open on-demand courses over the next few weeks. We know social distancing isn't fun, but it can be a great opportunity to learn new things. So while other people are making a second pass through their Netflix queue, you can build your Elastic Stack, observability and security skills and come out the other side an expert. Jason Kingdon, Blue Prism Jason Kingdon, Executive Chairman at Blue Prism In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Our corporate philanthropic initiative Blue Prism for Good helps communicate a vision to unleash society's full potential and inspire the future of work through automation. Our four pillars of focus are charity and fundraising, inclusivity, support for nonprofits and education. We also launched Women in RPA to celebrate the contributions of women at Blue Prism but also women who are succeeding in robotic process automation and the wider technology industry. We also strive to build a more diverse and inclusive workforce by sponsoring women-centered business events, volunteering in our communities and providing learning opportunities for girls interested in technology careers. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Now more than ever, we all need to work together as a community to get through the unprecedented global challenges COVID-19 presents. With the goal to alleviate some of the challenges our customers are facing, Blue Prism rolled out the Blue Prism COVID-19 Response Program. We are helping by providing digital workers and process automation resources to organizations impacted by COVID-19 to help them maintain critical business continuity. We have helped organizations in the life sciences, public safety and healthcare arena — people on the front lines of this pandemic — by improving the efficiency of healthcare supply purchasing. Hospital suppliers are reporting greater shortages as well as increased demand for parts due to the COVID-19 crisis and the strain it is placing on the healthcare industry worldwide. Ascension's purchasing team has seen an 800-percent increase in the cancellations coming from suppliers in recent weeks. In the face of this emergency, intelligent automation leader Agilify Automation is developing an intelligent process for Ascension, with digital workers from Blue Prism, to cancel the purchase order lines and relieve the manual burden the team is facing today. By streamlining a manual, repetitive process, new digital workers are now able to quickly work through the high volume of cancellations, improving purchasing efficiency, decreasing response time and helping the hospital system better administer to patients. Bill Moore, Zello Bill Moore, CEO at Zello In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Zello is a push-to-talk voice messaging service that enables collaboration for workers and communities. We have often emerged as a critical tool in times of crisis for coordinating preparedness and rescue efforts, and the current coronavirus pandemic is no exception. That's why we are making our enterprise-grade solution available at no cost to first responders, anywhere in the world. Through our Zello for First Responders program, U.S.-based first responders were previously able to use the professional version of Zello for free. Now we're opening up the program to first responders around the world. Zello has also mobilized staff to quickly handle the surging demand for the program. Heather Jin, Medallia Heather Jin, Global Head of Social Impact at Medallia In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Medallia.org is committed to doing our part in relief efforts, and nonprofits are among the most vital yet vulnerable organizations right now. Critical in caring for at-risk populations and helping government agencies understand gaps in services, nonprofits on the front line may be overwhelmed by the increased demand or financially hit due to the volatile economic climate. We are empowering Medallians to give back to causes they are passionate about through our volunteer time off policy, where every employee has three days per calendar year to volunteer. We have consolidated virtual volunteering opportunities that are of most immediate need. In addition, we will soon be organizing company-wide virtual volunteering events to support those impacted most by COVID-19 — for example, to support and mentor students with career and college advice as schools are closed. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We are offering Medallia Crowdicity free for six months for all new nonprofit customers. To ensure nonprofits get value immediately, we have pre-packaged the product with COVID-19 specific templates, co-designed with nonprofits, to help organizations crowdsource immediate needs and actionable ideas from their communities on how to prepare the most vulnerable for disasters, engage employees and volunteers remotely and stay financially resilient through crisis. For example, the Alzheimer's Society is currently using Crowdicity to create a space for people living with dementia and their caretakers to share their unique challenges through COVID-19. Jared King, INvoiced Jared King, CEO & Co-Founder at Invoiced In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? As a small company, we have limited resources for community giving. But we took a look at the developing situation and wanted to do what we could. What we realized is that for many businesses, their cash situation has changed in the blink of an eye. We thought about the many nonprofits that need to continue playing important roles and for whom effectively managing cash has become both more important and more difficult overnight. For nonprofits who send invoices for donations or their services, we offer an accounts receivable automation solution that can help them get cash in the door faster and with less effort. So we're offering our platform to U.S. nonprofits for free until September 16. That gives them up to six months of free use of our system. All they need to do is create a free trial account and email us with their EIN at [email protected] We're hopeful that nonprofits take us up on this offer so they'll be equipped with an important toolset for making it through this extremely challenging time. Tim Angelillo, Sourced Craft Cocktails Tim Angelillo, Founder & CEO at Sourced Craft Cocktails In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? In this time of crisis, we wanted to do our part in being of service to three groups: bartenders, who have helped us deliver 3.5 million cocktails over the last four years and currently have no earning potential with bar closures across America, by putting them to work with a livable wage delivering cocktails to homes; consumers, who are stuck inside and now can enjoy a small amount of comfort while responsibly practicing social distancing; and companies and organizations looking for ways to bring their employees together during this period by helping them set up a virtual happy hour. Our Sourced Social Series is a real virtual happy hour that delivers the exact same cocktail to all employees' homes with an educational live-streamed cocktail demonstration hosted by a local bartender. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? This pivot to an in-home delivery model is an effort to support our bartenders, who are the face of our craft cocktail company. Bartenders earn 20 percent of each order, which provides them a livable wage in each of the five markets we serve — Austin, Dallas, San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles. To support our bartender community nationally, Sourced is also donating an additional 5 percent on top of that to the US Bartender's Guild Bartender Emergency Relief Fund. The USBG has always been the backbone of the bartending community, and the bartending community needs the USBG now more than ever. Today we are honored to continue to contribute based on our consumers' support in drinking our craft cocktails at home. Christina Luconi, Rapid7 Christina Luconi, Chief People Officer at Rapid7 In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Each of our offices is supporting our local restaurants by hosting trivia and other contests and providing local restaurant gift cards as prizes. Our company has a great love of music, so we are introducing a Friday night concert series and live-streaming musicians to support them. It provides a great opportunity for our people and their families, roommates or other co-habitants to enjoy the power of music, together. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We have some well-established relationships with organizations like Hack.Diversity and are continuing to support them — especially now. Kimberley Storin, RapidDeploy Kimberley Storin, Chief Market Officer at RapidDeploy In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? RapidDeploy is based in both Austin and South Africa. We kicked off our COVID-19-related community efforts by helping the most vulnerable communities impacted by COVID-19 in South Africa. We are doing a RapidDeploy internal challenge to raise money for SAHarvest. For every dollar we collectively raise, RapidDeploy will match that donation up to $5,000. And if we raise more than $5,000 as a team, our CEO will also personally make a $5,000 donation. Mark Ralls, Invicti Security Mark Ralls, President & COO at Invicti Security In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Netsparker (Invicti Security) is offering complimentary licenses of our web application security solution to any organization that is involved in the fight against COVID-19. We want to ensure that organizations on the front lines of the response are able to secure and protect their web applications against threats and bad actors who might otherwise disrupt their ability to provide critical services. Kelsey Peterson, Square Root Kelsey Peterson, HR & Recruiting Coordinator at Square Root In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Since our quarterly company meeting will now be remote, we donated our event budget to the Central Texas Food Bank to support their increase in need. We're also encouraging our team to redeem their recognition points from Bonusly for donations to Central Texas Food Bank, which we're matching at 100 percent. How have you adapted, expanded and changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Earlier this year, we expanded our support of diversity and inclusion in tech, by providing sponsorship for 100 girls to attend Girlstart's STEM Conference. With recent events, our funds are now being reallocated to the areas of most need so that Girlstart can still bring STEM education to girls in underserved areas. We're also promoting our matching donation program internally and providing easy ways to support the WHO COVID-19 Response Fund and local nonprofits like Central Texas Food Bank and Austin Pets Alive. Sam Kroonenburg, A Cloud Guru Sam Kroonenburg, CEO at A Cloud Guru In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We believe that the times now call for even more accessible and affordable cloud education for those in need, whether they're an individual looking to change their lives or a global enterprise needing the power to strengthen an adaptive workforce. Therefore, we temporarily reduced the price of A Cloud Guru to keep high-quality education within reach during these difficult times. Kelsey Ozar, AlertMedia Kelsey Ozar, VP of People at AlertMedia In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We are saddened by the losses people are experiencing, including the economic impact we are seeing in our local community, so our team put together a Support Austin initiative. Our initiative includes an emphasis on hiring local candidates within our own community. Given that we are unable to get together for our typical family-style lunches, we have reallocated our in-office food budget to support local Austin area restaurants via weekly Favor credits for our employees to spend at local restaurants. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Our annual community service program includes monetary donations to six local Austin nonprofits, typically paired with a volunteer service event each quarter. In light of the current environment, we have quadrupled our annual donation budget and added 14 new local nonprofits to our program, including those that are directly helping people deal with this crisis in our community. Ultimately, 20 local nonprofit organizations have been selected to receive a $5,000 donation from AlertMedia. Rachel Hutchisson, Blackbaud Rachel Hutchisson, VP of Corporate Citizenship & Philanthropy at Blackbaud In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? At Blackbaud, we believe the world will be a better place when good takes over, and that's a higher purpose that's even more critical during these times. In Austin, our employees are volunteering from a distance. Many are writing cards to seniors, who are so isolated right now. We also have many employees donating blood and plasma, which is in short supply and high demand during the pandemic. One of our employees has volunteered to donate blood plasma to the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project to help seriously ill patients fight the virus. Another one of our employees, who is a regular volunteer with Generation Serve, is supporting their "helping from home" volunteer initiatives, which include creating a "Going on a Bear Hunt" teddy bear scavenger hunt and creating T-shirt bags at home for the Travis County Food Pantries. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Blackbaud's mission is to empower and connect people through technology to drive impact for social good, which is especially critical during these times. Throughout all major disasters, Blackbaud is on the front lines with its customers and supporting the social good community globally. Blackbaud made a donation to the World Health Organization and the UN Foundation's COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund to put technology in place to fight the spread of the virus. This technology will help track the virus and provide powerful insights into how it is spreading, ensuring patients are getting the care they need, improving the buying and shipping of essential medical supplies and accelerating efforts to develop a vaccine. Melissa Mormon, Builder Homesite Melissa Mormon, Co-Founder & Chief Experience Officer at Builder Homesite In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Since our founding, giving back has always been at the core of who we are — and what we do. In many cases, one of our team members will share a cause with us that's their personal passion. Often, that becomes a passion for many others here. This had led to many enduring relationships with causes that we continue to support today. Typically, we start by giving our time, expertise and sweat equity — as well as funding. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? In some cases, the company has paused face-to-face giving back at the request of these organizations — and local, state and federal leaders — to help "flatten the curve" of the coronavirus. However, I know each of our many volunteers are eager to resume their hands-on work once we've put COVID-19 behind us as a community. Our philosophy of giving back is giving of ourselves and our time through hands-on volunteer work, and as such, we are considering our next partnership with a local organization to help those in need. Gilles Meiers, LumApps Gilles Meiers, Head of Marketing, US, at LumApps In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? By keeping employees connected, regardless of where they are working, companies that have adopted LumApps are better equipped to cope with such a crisis. LumApps is now offering an out-of-the box Enterprise Communication Portal for free until June 30 to companies that want to streamline internal communication. JOshua Lee, Ardius Joshua Lee, Co-Founder & CEO at Ardius In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Ardius' key technology was almost made for the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program. By integrating with any company's existing technical and financial systems, our software learns to automatically discover, categorize and qualify tax credit eligible expenses. In the past weeks, our team has responded to an overwhelming number of anxious questions from the startup community, centered on payroll tax holidays, tax credits, deductions and exemptions. As more details are released in the days to come, Ardius wants to make sure that all startups understand the relief that might be available to them and that such specialized knowledge is not reserved for a few highly specialized and expensive CPAs. With everyone sheltering in, working from home and social distancing, it's easy to forget about the greater community. Ardius is trying to combat this way of thinking by creating innovative ways to get more involved. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Although the COVID-19 crisis continues to increase in severity and seriousness, Ardius is leveraging our know-how and making as many resources available and accessible to make a difference for startups in need. Even before the onset of this crisis, Ardius saw its objective far beyond just creating software to automate the R&D tax credit and payroll offset. Our goal and mission has always been to bring growth, cash flow and strategic resources where they're needed the most. To this end, Ardius has stepped up to help startups not just thrive and grow but survive. Some of the initiatives Ardius started since the crisis began include waiving all our sign-up fees for any company needing help; utilizing a portion of our fees to purchase back the very services and products that our customers sell; donating those clients' services and products to other startups that may need it; and deferring our fee until companies receive their payroll tax offset. Wout Brusselaers, Deep 6 AI Wout Brusselaers, Founder & CEO at Deep 6 AI In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We focus on where we can make the biggest impact with our specific resources and expertise. First of all, that means committing to our most local community: our team. Deep 6 AI has worked hard to assemble a world-class team of smart, talented people with a deep passion for driving innovation in healthcare. My goal is to keep that team together and focused on our mission: getting life-saving treatments to patients faster. How have you expanded, adapted or changed your product offering or strategy in light of recent events? It is always a privilege to work in healthcare, given the purpose and the impact this lends to our professional and personal lives. So for us, the current crisis is yet another opportunity to double down on our mission and help the efforts to battle the pandemic. For Deep 6, that means that we immediately expanded our AI-driven clinical trials acceleration software to accurately detect evidence of SARS-CoV-2 across our hospital partners' rapidly growing patient data. This helps researchers on the front lines of the crisis find patients for the many clinical trials that are required to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to market, as soon as safely possible. Philip Hickey, Seriously Philip Hickey, EVP of Brand & Marketing at Seriously In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? In response to the heightened risks of social isolation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Seriously is aiming to increase social engagement and boost community resilience through its leading title, Best Fiends. Best Fiends is enabling family, friends and players from all over the world to connect and support each other remotely by sharing free daily gifts. The daily gifts are sent as virtual gift packages using the in-game Post Office feature. Every time a player claims a gift, the friend who sent it simultaneously receives a gift of their own. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Best Fiends is also supporting players with awesome new content, like the fan-favorite Easter Egg Hunt where players win free rewards by finding things hidden around the game. There's also an extra special Easter Egg with a special message — and a digital care package of free gifts. Leslie Burthey, FabFitFun, Inc. Leslie Burthey, VP of Marketing at FabFitFun, Inc. How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We rolled out our Healthcare Heroes initiative on April 2, and doctors and nurses around the country can now sign up to receive their free FabFitFun bundles. As they're risking their lives and serving us all on the front lines every day, we wanted to show our appreciation with some essentials and a little self care, as they certainly need and deserve it right now. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Every season between our seasonal box sales we host mid-season e-commerce "edit sales." Our spring edit sale is taking place right now. As schools began to close and millions of children were sent home without the free school lunch they depend on, we were proud to quickly partner with No Kid Hungry as our spring edit sale charity partner. Our members now have the opportunity to donate directly to the charity through the sale, and FabFitFun will match up to 50,000 of the donations received. Nir Korczak, Playtika Nir Korczak, Chief Marketing Officer at Playtika In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Playtika has taken a dual approach to support people in need during the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the recently launched #PlayApartTogether campaign to promote the WHO's health guidelines, Playtika's studios have rolled out a series of in-game initiatives to encourage players to stay safe through social distancing but also to feel connected with one another through in-game communication. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? With the implementation of Playtika's company-wide work-from-home policy, we wanted to give back to the wider community. Instead of canceling the provision of catered meal delivery to offices, the company is donating food packages to nonprofits serving vulnerable communities across Eastern Europe in Minsk, Kiev, Dnipro and Vinnitsa, as well as in Israel. Playtika is delivering over 2,500 food packages and hot meals per week across its Eastern European sites, as well as 1,000 food packages per week in Israel. Tiffany Sayers, Centerfield Tiffany Sayers, Culture Manager at Centerfield How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? Centerfield recently donated to Frontline Foods, an organization raising funds to feed healthcare workers by partnering with local restaurants. We wanted to show our sincere appreciation for healthcare workers who are on the front line, risking their lives to save others and helping to put an end to this unfortunate pandemic. Our donation will also help our local restaurants that are struggling financially during this time. We have also given to Meals on Wheels, an organization dedicated to keeping seniors safe and nourished. We want to take care of our elderly who are at high risk from COVID-19. Meals on Wheels replenishes their food and supplies, subsidizes their transportation and enables tech-based efforts to check in on them. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? At Centerfield, one of our favorite ways of giving back to the community is by donating our time and volunteering at local elementary schools by helping with their after-school programs and partnering with awesome organizations that assemble care packages for those in need. Sadly, we've had to temporarily suspend our volunteer events that were scheduled for March and April but are eager to pick things back up where we left off once it's safe for everyone. In addition to donating funds to initiatives that need our support during this challenging time, we're looking into ways that we can volunteer virtually. Joanna McFarland, HopSkipDrive Joanna McFarland, Co-Founder & CEO at HopSkipDrive How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? HopSkipDrive helps children and other vulnerable populations, such as senior citizens, connect with rigorously vetted CareDrivers who safely get them where they need to go. Right now, school closures are keeping kids at home and CareDrivers with less rides to give. This means we currently have the capacity to help our community during this time of crisis. In some cases, we are expanding our service offerings, such as helping senior citizens. We're working with a current client to increase our services for seniors, assisting them in picking up food deliveries, buying groceries, picking up prescriptions and more. While students don't need transportation to and from school while schools are closed, we're looking at ways to support them and continue our mission to promote equity. For instance, delivering education technology for distance learning or taking students to open meal programs. We've also been focusing on new areas of our business: community support initiatives. We built a ride donation program to let individuals and organizations donate rides to those in need. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We are partnering with community organizations to donate rides and HopSkipDrive gift cards to children, families and senior citizens in need. Whether the ride is for a meal delivery for a senior, taking a child to pick up free lunch from a school meal program, getting children with IEPs to their appointments or helping health workers with their child transportation needs, we're all in this together. We are also committed to supporting HopSkipDrive CareDrivers' health and safety. We offer free telehealth and diagnostic services through a partnership with Ro and are in constant contact with drivers regarding new partnerships and what the various benefits are out there for them. We are also providing hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes for CareDrivers as a measure to further protect CareDrivers as well as riders. Jill Wilder, MobilityWare Jill Wilder, Director of Human Resources at MobilityWare How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? MobilityWare is helping to flatten the curve by participating in the #PlayApartTogether initiative, which promotes healthy physical distancing. We've also forged a partnership with Vungle and others in the mobile advertising community to make it easier for our players to make much-needed donations to BuildAid and other well-known entities who are aiding to combat the pandemic. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Our charitable efforts are normally more local in nature. For example, we've partnered with Second Harvest Food Bank and cancer support organizations that are based in Orange County. With the global nature of COVID-19, we have the opportunity to offer our support to the international community. With just these two initiatives, MobilityWare and its partners are able to reach people in need around the world. As a part of the #PlayApartTogether initiative, MobilityWare will bring players exclusive in-game events, activities and rewards across our portfolio of titles to promote social distancing in an effort to halt the spread of the coronavirus. We are also working with Vungle and other participating ad networks to help support the Make-A-Wish Foundation, SpecialEffect, BuildAid and other charities. Clay Telfer, Bambee Clay Telfer, Director of Customer Success at Bambee In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We've started offering 30 minutes of free human resources consultation to any business owner during these difficult times, whether they're a Bambee client or not. We've also made our coronavirus webinars, FAQs and policy templates available for free on our website. Most small business owners have never had to deal with furloughs before — let alone the brand-new regulations from the Families First Act — and we want to alleviate the confusion and help keep people in business in any way we can. Alexis Kavazanjian, PatientPop Alexis Kavazanjian, VP of People at PatientPop How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? During this time of necessary isolation, telehealth is empowering healthcare providers to deliver care — and calm. Our entire team at PatientPop has been working tirelessly to launch PatientPop Telehealth, a virtual healthcare solution that allows providers to continue to care for their patients virtually amid the COVID-19 crisis. Michael Son, Tapas Media Michael Son, Editor in Chief at Tapas Media In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We've always believed in utilizing our engineering, business and financial resources to help our creator community thrive. We feel that our diverse community's stories are incredibly important, especially during these times when so many people are sheltering in place. Their stories have the opportunity to provide entertainment, comfort, escape, catharsis, community and so much more. So for our creator community, we'll be waiving the fees and commissions associated with our open ad revenue program, along with our internal microtransaction-based crowdsourcing feature starting April 3. Creators will be earning and taking home 100 percent of the revenue from those programs during the month of April. Marisa Peters, VideoAmp Marisa Peters, Chief People Officer at VideoAmp How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We will be donating 50,000 meals to Feeding America to assist our neighbors in need during this time of uncertainty. Together, we can extend our reach beyond screens and impact our communities in a positive way. Emmanuel Straschnov, Bubble Emmanuel Straschnov, Founder & Co-CEO at Bubble In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? As the coronavirus crisis unfolded, Bubble introduced a free pricing plan to support anyone building an app that directly helped people affected by COVID-19. Bubble's mission is to empower people to build their ideas quickly, efficiently and without hiring an expensive team of programmers. Since we began our COVID initiative, we have had dozens of Bubble apps launch and go live, from testing location crowdsourcing apps to small business gift card donation sites. Some of these apps took users less than three days to build. One user launched a platform on March 15 to let people buy gift cards for restaurants that gained national attention and was acquired by USA Today a week later. We pride ourselves on our ability to support people making urgently needed tools, and we are happy to support these new users every step of the way. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We planned to participate in our first team volunteer event at the end of March, but the current situation has affected that. When everyone was mandated to work remotely and all of our building services were halted, we wanted to make sure their service workers were going to get paid. We deliberately reached out to our janitorial and plant maintenance companies and said, "Although you aren't able to work, we want to make sure that we can continue to support your workers because we care about their livelihoods and their families." This is just the right thing to do as we're in a much better position than many businesses as a funded tech startup. Jennifer Xia Spradling, FreeWill Jennifer Xia Spradling, Co-CEO at FreeWill In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Nonprofits are incredibly squeezed right now. They are providing more crucial services but also getting less funding. We talk a lot about the services these nonprofits offer, like free meals, shelter and emergency healthcare aid, but we don't talk as much about how they have lost many of their funding sources due to social distancing. Galas and events are cancelled, one-on-one meetings with major donors are cancelled and attendance revenues from museums and theaters have evaporated. Since FreeWill provides digital fundraising tools for nonprofits, we realized that the best way we could contribute is to help nonprofits figure out innovative ways to get funding digitally. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We've dedicated around 10 percent of our full-time staff to providing free resources for nonprofits, which include weekly informational webinars, roundtables where people at similar nonprofits can share ideas and support for those applying to the $2 trillion CARES Act stimulus package, which could help save their employees' jobs. Akinyi Ochieng, Nova Credit Akinyi Ochieng, Marketing at Nova Credit In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Nova Credit helps newcomers to the United States access and build credit. While all Americans are navigating uncertainty in the midst of this pandemic, immigrants face additional stress as many find themselves far from family and friends during a period of self-isolation and lacking information about visa processing. We're focused on providing resources that shed light on what immigrant communities should expect during this time, which include webinars with leading immigrant attorneys and a regularly updated page containing recent changes made by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and Department of Homeland Security in light of the novel coronavirus. Nearly 37 percent of small restaurant owners are immigrants, and at this time, restaurants are suffering. We've decided to raise awareness for restaurants that are still providing takeout and delivery services via social media and are encouraging people to patronize these establishments. We're also celebrating the various ways immigrants are helping America weather this crisis, highlighting their contributions to healthcare, scientific research, agriculture and more. Jason Yanowitz, BlockWorks Group Jason Yanowitz, Co-Founder at BlockWorks Group In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? We have more than twenty shows in the BlockWorks Group Podcast Network and millions of listeners. There are so many amazing small businesses that need a platform to get in front of an audience and tell their stories. We're giving away ad slots on several of our podcasts exclusively to small businesses in our community that need to advertise but don't have the budget for it right now. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? In the past, our charitable initiatives have been separate from our day-to-day work with partners. We're now thinking about charitable initiatives that bring our community together to really amplify the impact. We're working with our partners, clients and even competitors to give time and resources to consumers and small businesses in need. AJ Audino, Particle Health AJ Audino, Director of Strategy & Operations at Particle Health In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? When the COVID-19 crisis hit the U.S., Particle Health was in a unique position to help. Much like Plaid and Twilio, Particle's middleware API platform enables healthcare technology companies to access an individual's digital medical history. We are now offering our services for free to companies that are working on COVID-related efforts, allowing them to screen for a person's risk factors in a scalable way and take action. So far we've been able to onboard a new cohort of innovative companies and do our part to accelerate the global fight against COVID. Brian Litvack, LeagueApps Brian Litvack, CEO & Co-Founder at LeagueApps In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? The abrupt stop to sports had a widespread impact on the 100,000 organizers who make sports happen for our kids. Guided by our core values, we pivoted our platform to provide free support and educational services to help guide these leaders amidst so many business and personal uncertainties. Our virtual events have begun to unify the community in ways we never imagined. Giving back through our platform helps build toward a positive future where kids are back playing sports. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We built LeagueApps to be mission-focused and service-oriented, particularly through FundPlay, where we provide resources to underserved communities. It's a key belief that underscores the powerful opportunity we have to ensure every child has access to play. FundPlay will play a leadership role, particularly as our community faces unprecedented challenges, to deliver on our promise of bringing sports to all kids. Dan Brillman, Unite Us Dan Brillman, Co-Founder & CEO at Unite Us In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? As a mission-driven technology company that connects social and healthcare providers through coordinated care networks, Unite Us was built to respond to a crisis such as COVID-19. Our team has been in contact with government, health plans, health systems and community leaders across the country to provide communities and public infrastructure immediate and long-term support. In NYC, our team is working hand-in-hand with our community-based partners to expand our existing network's capacity to ensure that people's social needs are met as the COVID-19 situation develops. In addition, we are responding to the crisis with the following adjustments and enhancements to support our local networks: COVID-19 related social needs screenings that identify social needs and quickly connect clients to services, COVID-19 exposure assessments, which will appear in every referral workflow to determine a client's exposure to COVID-19 across the community, and public-facing websites for individuals in need to better connect them with local resources. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Unite Us is part of a coalition of NYC healthcare leaders, businesses and community-based organizations supporting a fundraising campaign that will contribute to and empower local organizations during the COVID-19 crisis. The funds raised by the coalition will allow these organizations to continue offering support to the local communities that need their resources now more than ever. Unite Us is also expanding its network in NYC at no cost and providing pro-bono technology and support. Two local NYC network partners that we are supporting to catalyze this network, called UniteNYC, are AIRnyc and Public Health Solutions, or PHS. AIRnyc provides remote services and virtual home visits to vulnerable families across New York City, helping people refill medications, schedule appointments, access telehealth benefits and connect to food programs, housing services and legal assistance. PHS supports low-income New Yorkers and addresses a wide range of public health issues, including food and nutrition, health insurance, maternal and child health, reproductive and sexual health, tobacco control and HIV/AIDS. Garrison Gibbons, Knotch Garrison Gibbons, Head of People at Knotch In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? We have made donations, as a company, to healthcare workers in locations where we have team members, including the USA, Romania and Argentina. We also just launched with Givz, a charitable donation platform, in an effort to allow every employee to make an individual donation of up to $10 from the company to a COVID-19 related charity of their choice. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We typically do clothing, can, toy and book drives, but given that our physical office has closed, we have gotten creative with applications like Givz in an effort to continue that concept. My team, along with our internal culture club, is aiming to expand upon our charitable initiatives during this time. John Sherwin, Hydrant John Sherwin, Co-Founder at Hydrant In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? We're donating 5,000 hydration packs to the medical staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York — the majority of which have added caffeine per the request of doctors — to keep them on their feet and fresh as they work tirelessly through this pandemic. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We wanted to make an impact locally here in New York, and so we worked with our connections to find a doctor who could help us coordinate a one-off donation to the team at Mount Sinai. We've also been in touch with our customers who are healthcare workers and sent them product directly to keep them hydrated. Ankur Nagpal, Teachable Ankur Nagpal, Founder & CEO at Teachable In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Teachable is giving away our travel and expense budget in March to CAMBA, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit, and The United Way of Durham to help our local communities in NYC and North Carolina. We want to support the nonprofits in our area by doing what we can to help. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We rolled out a plan to give Teachable for free to people who are directly working on COVID-19 research. We're also giving away one to two free months to any creator who has been affected and writes in. In addition, we've donated $25,000 to the Creator Fund to help creators who have been adversely affected and are also donating 25 percent of all the revenue we derive from our Reach Summit. Vivek Sharma, Movable Ink Vivek Sharma, CEO at Movable Ink In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? NYC is the epicenter of COVID-19 in the United States, and doctors and nurses are already running out of supplies and are either wearing single-use masks multiple times or improvising with anything else they can find. Health workers are superheroes and we should keep them protected as they work long hours to save lives. That's why Movable Ink is proud to support the One Million Masks initiative with a donation of $10,000. One Million Masks NYC is uniting New York-based startups in the fight against COVID-19 and aims to provide one million masks to healthcare workers on the frontlines. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Movable Ink has encouraged employees to give back if they're able to. Our team has an internal list of suggestions for how to support communities in small ways, whether that's by fostering an animal from a local rescue organization or purchasing a gift card to support a local small business. In addition to supporting the One Million Masks initiative and our local communities, Movable Ink is offering our clients the ability to share real-time critical messages at no additional cost. Marketers are rushing to produce service updates and other content related to COVID-19. So, we recently launched our Critical Messages app, allowing marketers to change key service messaging in emails even after they've been sent. Sabrina Kieffer, Skillshare Sabrina Kieffer, COO at Skillshare In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? This is an unprecedented time, and we want to be a supportive, encouraging resource. At Skillshare, we have a unique opportunity to help foster creativity, and we've been touched by the countless stories of people turning to our classes as a way to help manage stress, practice mindfulness, feel connected and get creative indoors. In an effort to support as many people as possible during this difficult time, Skillshare is giving two months of free access for everyone with .edu, .k12 and .ac.uk email addresses, as well as a limited number of free memberships based on need. Skillshare is also proud to provide a resource for people to earn passive income by teaching on our platform. To support this, we've launched a "Spring Teach Challenge" to help guide them through the process. We are also working with artists in need to help them create content for Skillshare, are providing resources to teachers on how they can support their students and doubling teacher referral bonuses in April. Internally, we've also launched a "Social Good Challenge," in which cross-functional teams across our organization are competing to earn the greatest number of points by completing class projects on Skillshare. The winning team will select a COVID-19 relief charity to which Skillshare will donate. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? In addition to providing free two-month access for students and teachers and free memberships based on need, Skillshare has also partnered with YouTuber and inventor Mark Rober to make a $10,000 donation to No Kid Hungry. Kate Telge, Tonal Kate Telge, Community Manager at Tonal How is your team giving back to the local community right now, and why? We launched a charitable program in March that is running through the end of April, where we will be donating $1 to the CDC Foundation for every time one our members posts their workout to our Facebook community or on Instagram using the hashtag #TonalGivesBack. Before the shelter-in-place orders were mandated we also started a new free feature for the members in our Facebook community called The Daily Pause, which is a daily guided meditation from one of our coaches that is intended to help people take the edge off during these stressful times and focus part of their day on physical and mental recovery. We've also provided some of our yoga classes for free on our Tonal YouTube channel. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We had previously done a #TonalGivesBack initiative where we donated the proceeds to KEEN SF, a program that supports disabled youth by providing them with free and fun exercise and fitness programs. As a wellness-focused company, we wanted to be able to support the CDC's efforts through this challenging time in a way that also provides some additional motivation to our members while allowing them to work out from the safety and comfort of their own home. Kyle Swinsky, AMOpportunities, Inc. Kyle Swinsky, CEO at AMOpportunities, Inc. In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? At AMOpportunities, we believe that internationally trained doctors are an answer to the impending physician shortage and, at present, the global pandemic of COVID-19 that is straining the resources and frontline workers of the U.S. healthcare system. There are 65,000 unlicensed international medical graduates in the country that could lend their support. These are the same doctors that AMOpportunities helps find training at hospitals as their entry point. We are petitioning the U.S. government, healthcare system, and the Federation of State Medical Boards to utilize the knowledge and expertise of these trainees in U.S. hospitals. In just over a week, we have nearly 10,000 signatures, centralizing public opinion. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We are focusing on tangible initiatives to strengthen the U.S. healthcare workforce. As mentioned above, we are fighting to get U.S.-based IMGs to work in any capacity at U.S. hospitals. These 65,000 trained professionals could have a huge impact on this country's strained healthcare workforce. We are also working with our network to import N95 masks to high-density areas in the United States. My co-founder and AMOpportunities' COO, Ben Bradley, is working with our international partners to source N95 masks and other medical equipment for our hospitals and has already arranged such a delivery to a hospital in Chicago from a distributor in China. Mallory Nees, Reverb Mallory Nees, Social Media Strategist at Reverb In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Based on an idea from one of Reverb's customer engagement specialists, we created our "Gig From Home" series. We're working with a diverse lineup of emerging artists, like Chicago's own FEE LION and Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, to recreate the magic of their concerts from their homes and stream the live performances to Reverb's 2.1 million social media followers. Fans can tune in and show support by donating directly to the artist or by purchasing merchandise, just like they would at a real show. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? As part of our "Gig From Home" series, artists are getting compensated for their work through a combination of fan donations, merch sales and funds from Reverb. We're also collaborating with other companies, influencers and brands within the music industry to raise money for causes like the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund and the American Red Cross. Outside of these partnerships, Reverb is working to provide more access to free and affordable music-making tools, like software and video lessons, and creating content that keeps our audience entertained and inspired to stay creative during this time. Jay Rudman, TopstepTrader Jay Rudman, CEO at TopstepTrader In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Over the past two weeks, with help from some of our generous partners, our amazing team has taken time away from their accountable responsibilities to put together a program that will provide a high-level trading education experience. We have packed a lifetime worth of knowledge and skills into a dynamic 30-day free practice trading account, and have made it available to anyone who wishes to take advantage of it. All of our educational and training resources have been made readily available and easily accessible. Participants will have the opportunity to learn everything from the intricacies of their trading platform to the basic principles and techniques of technical analysis and chart reading. We have also initiated a campaign promising 30 days of "Bite Size Trading" videos filled with useful tips and tools from some of our most trusted educators to help guide them along the way. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Another step we took to do our part was to reimburse Topstep employees once a week for takeout food orders from their local restaurants and favorite establishments. Most of us have friends and relatives in the hospitality industry, and they need our help now more than ever. I'm happy to say that our team members have embraced this policy with open arms! Garry Cooper, Rheaply Garry Cooper, CEO & Co-Founder at Rheaply, Inc. In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Rheaply has decided to offer an adaptation of its core technology, called an Emergency Resource Exchange (ERx), to the State of Illinois and all its medical facilities for free use during the COVID-19 crisis. With medical facilities currently experiencing shortages in ventilators and other equipment, Rheaply is providing an efficient system for hospitals to procure much-needed assets, and is doing so at no cost. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? Not only has Rheaply created a free version of its platform in light of the COVID-19 crisis, but the platform has been adapted, in collaboration with logistics, academic and public partners, to expedite the process of getting resources where they need to be. The platform also provides the option for medical facilities to donate useful stock to efficiently help in potentially dire circumstances. Greg Fenton, RedShelf Greg Fenton, CEO & Co-Founder at RedShelf In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? As the COVID-19 outbreak escalated in recent weeks, countless campuses moved their on-ground courses to an online format and, in many cases, asked students to leave campus altogether. Many of those students couldn't access previously purchased materials locked in their dorm rooms. In response, RedShelf launched RedShelf Responds, an initiative providing students no-cost access to digital textbooks for the rest of the semester, thanks to the generosity of our publishing partners. Students from nonprofit, semester-based colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada are able to access up to seven free ebooks through May 25, 2020, at responds.redshelf.com. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? We have always believed in the enormous impact that digital course materials can have on affordability, access and outcomes in higher education. That impact has become even more pronounced as the entire academic community grapples with COVID-19, especially for those institutions working to quickly move many or all of their courses online. Kara Kaplan, Moonrise Kara Kaplan, CEO at Moonrise In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Moonrise is taking on the burden for essential businesses in two ways: First, we're committed to offering the use of our W2 temporary labor pool for free to businesses of any size that are in need of workers. We want to ensure that 100 percent of the cost of the shift goes directly to workers in need. Secondly, we are offering free use of our staffing software to any employer in need of quickly mobilizing a workforce on their own. Our flexible staffing solution includes fully remote onboarding, shift scheduling, touchless and geolocated timekeeping, same-day pay and a proprietary shift matching algorithm — all with one system. How have you adapted, expanded or changed your charitable giving initiatives in light of recent events? In light of recent events, we've redeployed our engineering resources to build out free solutions for essential businesses that are needed now more than ever. Our workers are a part of the frontline workforce that are allowing essential businesses to function. By waiving all costs, we're assisting these businesses in hopes that they are able to stay open and provide much-needed services for the public as well as jobs for Chicago workers. Travis LaMont, Analytics8 Travis LaMont, Qlik Practice Lead at Analytics8 In what ways is your team giving back to the local community right now? Along with the governmental restrictions that have been put in place, one of the risks many manufacturing and distribution companies face during this time is ensuring that they have the necessary supplies to maintain operations. While many companies will be doing everything they can to maintain operations and employment for their workers, the reality is that layoffs are likely to happen due to the fact that companies will have to shut down production due to a lack of necessary supplies. Unfortunately, many companies today do not have the visibility into their supply chain to make informed decisions and contingency plans to avoid such layoffs. We'd like to do our part to help companies avoid any unnecessary layoffs by providing them the visibility into their supply chain through a simplifi

News: World Economic Forum
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Industry Agenda Digital Media and Society Implications in a Hyperconnected Era World Economic Forum Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project report Prepared in collaboration with Willis Towers Watson January 2016 © WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM, 2016 – All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system. REF 181215 Contents 5 Executive Summary 8 Introduction 9 Methodology 10 Section 1: User Behaviour, Preferences and Concerns 20 Section 2: User Engagement 26 Section 3: Impact of Digital Media on Individuals, Organizations and Society 26 Benefits and Opportunities 31 Downsides and Risks 38 Section 4: Outlook and Call to Action 42 Project Contributors 44 Tables 58 Endnotes Preface We need only look to our own experience – at home, in public spaces and at work – to see that technological innovation and digitization are fundamentally reshaping our public, private and professional lives. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, and the Media, Entertainment and Information (MEI) Industries are at the core of this transformation; they provide the digital tools, services, applications and content we engage with, increasingly anytime and anywhere. Sarita Nayyar Managing Director The emerging digital MEI offerings are the main driver to World Economic smartphone, tablet and other connected device adoption, Forum USA as well as to our changing relationship with many other elements of daily life, such as health, consumer products and mobility. Around the world, people now spend more time using laptop computers and smartphones than they do in other daily activities, and our "connected time" is on the rise. This is referred to by the World Economic Forum as hyperconnectivity, and it will continue to affect how we interact with one other, how we learn and work, in ways that are both profound and impactful. MEI businesses have greatly benefited from the digital transformation of their industry, but the challenges of content and service congestion and of rapidly evolving end-user needs and preferences cannot be ignored. No individual, enterprise or government can afford to be unaware of the implications that the growing use of digital media, entertainment and information content and services ("digital media") will have on industry and society. MEI enterprises must continue to innovate to keep pace with the emerging media consumer who continually challenges industry business models and offerings. At the same time, we must begin planning for how our increased connection to digital media is and will continue to change the very fabric of our society. With this Digital Media and Society report, the World Economic Forum strives to raise general awareness, catalyse further discussion and stimulate action from its readers. Much can be done by decision-makers in both the public and private sectors to foster the positive implications of increased digital media use and to recognize and address its potentially unfavourable impacts. However, as much as public-private cooperation can improve the lives of citizens, in the context of hyperconnectivity much of this responsibility lies in the hands of the individual. As such, the report has been designed to speak to all types of readers. Whether the reader is a parent, a senior company executive or a government policy-maker, this study provides facts, figures and supporting evidence to all its claims, and includes tangible recommendations to all stakeholders for action. We hope this collective effort by an extensive group of organizations and individuals will stimulate further consideration of, and research into, the implications of everincreasing digital media use in our lives. Through action, partnership or further research, the ultimate objectives of the World Economic Forum are to ensure that an increasingly connected lifestyle remains an asset to business, individuals and society rather than a liability, and that all stakeholders benefit from our work and insights. Digital Media and Society 3 Executive Summary Innovations in technology, particularly in digital media, increasingly are changing the way people use Media, Entertainment & Information (MEI) services. More than this, the very fabric of daily life is being altered. People are interacting and connecting with each other in different ways. Their sensibilities and psychologies are changing. Blurring boundaries between private and professional lives, and the hunger for immediate information are driving online connection time. Trust in individuals' relationship with digital media has become an increasingly prominent issue. In some ways, new generations are leading the evolution in changing behaviour, but in others, older generations are "catching up" surprisingly quickly. The World Economic Forum's Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project was launched to provide insights on today's media, entertainment and information consumer, as well as on the broader impact of digital media use on individuals, organizations and the larger society.1 As part of that project, the Digital Media and Society report aims to highlight opportunities in digital media that can be encouraged and nurtured. The report also signals potentially negative consequences that need to be tackled – individuals and families can address some; others require the attention of institutions, from schools to corporations, and states to national governments. Digital Media and Society is based on evidence collected through desk research, project workshops, expert interviews and an online survey. Although the scope is large, it is not intended to be comprehensive. Rather, the report presents a broad picture of developments in digital media and their implications, in order to raise awareness, spark further discussion and stimulate the MEI industry and policy-makers to cooperate in two crucial ways: by cultivating the positive implications of digital media use and by addressing, and then re-dressing, its potentially negative impacts. Definitions For the purposes of the Digital Media and Society report, digital media is defined as products and services that come from the media, entertainment and information industry and its subsectors. It includes digital platforms (e.g. websites and applications), digitized content (e.g. text, audio, video and images) and services (e.g. information, entertainment and communication) that can be accessed and consumed through different digital devices. People's online behaviours shape their digital identities. Individuals may show different behaviour patterns in different contexts (e.g. private versus professional), which may be described as different digital personae. User behaviour, preferences and concerns People are spending more and more time online. Consider these approximate figures for 2015:2 –– 3 billion internet users –– 2 billion active social media users –– More than 1.6 billion mobile social accounts While laptops and desktops are still most commonly used, mobile devices are gaining fast on them, causing a significant change in people's engagement with digital media. Growth in mobile encounters is particularly strong in emerging countries, where consumers are leapfrogging from "no digital use" straight to "mobile use". Increased online connection time appears to be driven mainly by work or information seeking, followed by social and entertainment needs, based on findings from the five countries surveyed for this report. Digital media consumption for private and professional motives is more and more integrated, with individuals using digital media to move seamlessly back and forth between work and personal activities. Digital Media and Society 5 Sharing content has become a very important element of using digital media, with users most likely to share content that entertains, informs or inspires. Digital media also has made it possible for billions of online media consumers to participate in content creation. One-third of respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey conducted in October 2015 for this report, say they post written content, pictures or videos on social media sites either daily or a few times each week. The main characteristics of today's consumption patterns can be summarized as follows: –– Mobile: People now spend an average of two hours daily on the mobile web, one-third of their total online time, with Millennials and digital media users in emerging countries emerging countries leading the mobile revolution.3 The obvious advantages are that mobile usage is less dependent on place and time, and devices are more affordable than laptops/personal computers (PCs). –– Social and interactive: Social networking is by far the most popular online activity, clocking in at an average of 1.8 hours or 30% of daily online time.4 –– Flexible and personalized: Users can have a more active role and more control over the digital media offerings they use and engage, compared with traditional media. User accounts and cookies allow for customization of content displayed based on user characteristics and usage patterns. –– Fast, instant and convenient: Fast internet and new technologies (hardware and software) allow for easier access and use, and enriched content. –– More content: As content creation and distribution become simpler, a greater amount of content and services are becoming available. Content is more diverse, but consumption is potentially focused more on breadth than depth, as capacity is limited. The importance of content filtering, curation and recommendation has grown. –– Collective: The possibility to connect, share, recommend and communicate creates a collective experience that shapes not only behaviours and preferences, but also a collective consciousness of shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes. –– Fragmented and multi-channel: The huge number of channels and creators makes content ever more fragmented. Users access multiple platforms from multiple devices. Adapting content to these multiple platforms becomes imperative. –– The higher the usage of digital media, the higher the willingness to pay: Increased connection and use of digital media should tip the revenue scale in industry's favour, but innovation in creating better user experiences is crucial, as it is clearly evident that traditional digital advertising is losing its appeal and efficacy. 6 Digital Media and Society But new consumption patterns, along with the presence of more players and creators in the market, bring challenges. Consumer trust is at risk because of fundamental concerns about: –– Truthfulness of content, given its volume, the large number of creators and sources, and need for more clarity around filtering mechanisms. –– Integrity of the company/consumer value exchange. –– Security of personal data and digital identities from cybercrime, given the significance of this information to a consumer's professional, financial and social well-being. User engagement Engaging consumers through digital media requires much more than simply "pushing" marketing content or services at them. Consumers have become savvy at ignoring ubiquitous display advertisements and more and more are using ad-blocking software. Instead, engagement requires providing valuable content that meets user needs for information, convenience and entertainment, stimulates content sharing and "pulls" in consumers. For any brand or service, critical elements of this engagement strategy include: –– Entering into a conversation with consumers through social media –– Engaging employees to advocate the company through their social media activities –– Exhibiting socially responsible behaviour, particularly regarding use and control of users' personal data. The impact of digital media on individuals, organizations and society The greater use of digital media today is changing people's everyday lives and the way they connect and collaborate in the broader societal context, at work and in civil society. This project's research into five countries from different regions concludes that this is a global phenomenon. Much of the impact of this heightened use is beneficial to both individuals and society. Digital media has empowered people so that they no longer are passive bystanders or recipients in the transformations wrought by the digital revolution, but are actively shaping digital media and its meaning for society. The benefits to both individuals and society of increased digital media usage include the following: –– Assists social interaction and empowers individuals, connecting the like-minded across vast distances, as well as connecting those usually separated by social, economic, cultural, political, religious and ideological boundaries –– Offers the means to increase civic participation and facilitates the creation of communities with a common interest or cause –– Enhances flexibility for workers and employers, boosting productivity and enabling greater work-life integration –– Facilitates education and life-long learning to build and source skills The main risks of higher digital media consumption include the following: –– Can be used with harmful intentions to spread propaganda and mobilize followers –– Influences human decision making as a result of content filtering mechanisms that can target specific information to certain people with potentially discriminatory effects. This can happen through information sharing or manipulation of information, for example, during an electoral process ("digital gerrymandering") –– Potential for near term inequality due to the disruptions in labour markets and different skill requirements brought about by digital technology –– Changes in social skills and sense of empathy as children and adults spend more time online. Facilitates bullying, harassment and social defamation, reflecting threats and patterns seen in the offline world –– May impact mental and physical health if screen time is excessive. The harm includes stress, greater vulnerability to addictive behaviour, and less time spent in physical activity. Can pose health and developmental risks for young children if usage is not monitored Outlook and call to action The report's research suggests that action from diverse social players will make it more likely for people to take advantage of more-frequent use of digital media even as they mitigate related risks: –– Public and private sectors should partner for multistakeholder collaboration to drive action on the effects noted in this report. The World Economic Forum can facilitate public-private collaboration. Both regulators and industry can engage with academia and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to incorporate research findings and initiatives in creating and implementing new socially responsible MEI industry offerings or public policies. –– The public sector can help to update, promote and enforce evidence-based standards and regulations in order to facilitate the benefits of digital media and innovative solutions to mitigate the negative effects. It can also facilitate the creation of social institutions and programmes that assist individuals and the private sector in making digital culture healthier at home, in education, at work and in public life. For example, the European Commission's DG Connect group has a directorate dedicated to digital society, trust and security – every governmental body should establish similar resources for their country or region. However, any model of guidance and support should be adaptable to changes in the marketplace and user behaviour. –– The private sector, principally industry, should consider the implications for individuals when designing platforms and services or creating content. The private sector can deepen efforts to build trust with consumers, for example, by becoming more transparent about how personal data are used and showing a corporate ethos of accountability and social responsibility. An effective tool is sponsoring public and non-profit organizations that help to promote beneficial use of digital media. From an employer's perspective, organizations should forge a strategy to integrate digital media and technology into workflows, and should be proactive in addressing the opportunities and pitfalls that increased connectivity brings to the business and employees. –– Finally, individuals are encouraged to enhance their digital literacy and skills, and use digital media responsibly. Individuals thus can protect themselves and others, especially those who are vulnerable. Individuals can also get involved with civic organizations and NGOs on digital media issues that have an impact on their lives. Digital Media and Society 7 Introduction The digitization of the Media, Entertainment & Information (MEI) industry has established new opportunities for consuming, sharing and creating media content through a growing number of devices and platforms – at any time and from any place. Today's media content and advertising are distributed online and disseminated through social networks and digital platforms. As engaging with digital media grows easier, so does the time dedicated to content, platforms and services. New platforms and changing consumption patterns affect an individual's everyday life and social interactions, alter how work is done, and impact learning and civic action. Changing digital media consumption patterns and their impact on society are direct consequences of the fourth industrial revolution.5 The World Economic Forum is committed to helping organizations in both the private and public sectors to navigate through this transformational change. The Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project is one of many initiatives from the Forum to stimulate multistakeholder collaboration in addressing some of the implications on society of this fourth industrial revolution. More specifically, the project looks at one of the MEI industry's roles in this revolution. 8 Digital Media and Society The objective of Digital Media and Society, a report that is part of the Forum's project, is to provide insights on today's emerging MEI consumer, focusing on the factors that shape an individual's behaviour and preferences for digital media usage. Additionally, the report links those developments to broader impacts on the individual, organizations and society, highlighting the opportunities and benefits, as well as the risks and potential downside. After a "wild childhood", it is now time for digital media's "coming of age". Industry, the public sector, and the individual must assume responsibility for fostering the opportunities offered by digital media, while helping to mitigate the negative effects on individuals, organizations and society. Methodology The evidence presented in this report was collected through desk research, expert interviews, sessions at World Economic Forum events and an online survey conducted in October 2015 across the USA, Germany, South Africa, Brazil and China, with a representative sample of about 1,000 digital media users in each country. Opinions and additional supporting evidence have been provided through a project blog series. While it cannot be comprehensive, this report offers a broad picture of relevant developments in digital media and their wider implications. The aim is to raise awareness, spark further discussion and stimulate the Media, Entertainment & Information (MEI) industry as well as policy-makers to collaborate on cultivating the positive implications of digital media and discouraging the negative. Project sessions See Section 4: Outlook and Call to Action and Project Contributors for details Jakarta, Indonesia 19 April 2015 World Economic Forum on East Asia "Analogue Hearts and Digital Minds: The Impact of Digital Media on Human Behaviour" New York, USA 13 May 2015 MEI Industry Spring Strategy Meeting "Exploring the Drivers behind Changing Media Consumption Habits" Geneva, Switzerland 12 August 2015 Young Global Leaders (YGL) and Alumni Annual Summit "Digital Changes in Society" Dalian, People's Republic of China 10 September 2015 Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015 "China's Media Society: Impacts of Changing Media Consumption Patterns in China" Project videos Expert interviews conducted for the project were filmed and extracts of these interviews are featured in a series of videos focusing on the different topics covered in the report. Blog series A number of project-related articles were published on the World Economic Forum's Agenda Blog. They can be accessed through the Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project website on weforum.org. NB: All opinions expressed in the project videos and blog series are those of the interviewees and authors respectively. The World Economic Forum is an independent and neutral platform dedicated to generating debate on the key topics that shape global, regional and industry agendas. Implications of Digital Media Survey The Forum conducted an online survey in October 2015, in collaboration with comScore and Willis Towers Watson, with a representative sample of 5,070 digital media users aged 15-69 years drawn from: –– Brazil (1,033 participants) –– People's Republic of China (1,019 participants) –– Germany (1,023 participants) –– South Africa (997 participants) –– USA (998 participants) See Table 1 for an overview of demographic characteristics Segmentations used in Implications of Digital Media Survey Generation Millennials: reported age between 15 and 34 (born 1981-2000) Generation X: reported age between 35 and 50 (born 1965-1980) Baby Boomers: reported age between 51 and 69 (born 1947-1964) Sporadic users versus frequent users Sporadic users: the sample who reported spending less time than average per week consuming digital media Frequent users: the sample who reported spending more time than average per week consuming digital media Digital Media and Society 9 Section 1 User Behaviour, Preferences and Concerns Respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey are most frequently using PC/laptops (94%), televisions or TVs (93%) and smartphones (87%) for media consumption (Table 2a). Among heavy digital media users (14-plus hours/ week), PC/laptop strongly dominates other types of devices, most likely because it is still the most important device used at home and for work, at least in developed countries (Table 2b). User attention is focused on key devices, platforms and formats What are the dimensions of digital media usage and how are consumption patterns changing? Global internet penetration is deepening, with more than 3 billion internet users in 2015. Global Social Media Trends 2015, a report from the European Publishers Council, counts more than 2 billion active social media accounts and more than 1.6 billion mobile social accounts in 2015 (Figure 1).6 People spend more time online, extensively using social media and increasingly accessing digital media from mobile devices. This is especially so in emerging countries, which are leapfrogging fixed internet and personal computers (PCs) to go directly to smartphones. Traditional media (e.g. printed press and magazines, TV and radio) have a dwindling share of media consumption, already accounting for less than one-half of time spent, according to a 2014 statistic from GlobalWebIndex, a market research firm (Figure 3). On average, people spent more than three hours a day social networking and (micro-)blogging. Online communication platforms, such as social networking Currently, access to digital media from laptops and platforms and messaging services, play an important role desktops is still dominant globally, with roughly 60% of all in media content and advertising distribution. Content is web pages being viewed from laptops or desktops, and posted or shared via news feeds or discussion threads or 30% from mobile devices (Figure 2). But mobile viewing is increasingly within private groups in messaging applications. growing fast, especially in emerging countries.7 Tablets and other devices still represent a small share in comparison, but Social media is the fastest growing categories of media, and a trend is evolving of one usingofmultiple devices simultaneously, with content being consumed via numerous channels. 8 GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS GLOBAL SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2015readers and potential readers. brands and content to both active is quickly becoming the most important way to expose publishers' Figure 1: Global Digital Landscape Video usage and revenues are growing exponentially around the world. Publishers should drive strategies and tactics to leverage this inexorable trend Global digital landscape and year-on-year growth In total user numbers, percentage of penetration and growth, by category Total population Active Internet Users Active Social Media Accounts Unique Mobile Users Active Mobile Social Accounts 7.210 3.010 2.078 3.649 1.685 Billion Billion Billion WNMNBillion WNMN Billion WORLD NEWSMEDIA NETWORK Urbanisation Penetration Penetration Penetration 53% 42% 29% 51% FIGURE REPRESENTS TOTAL GLOBAL POPULATION, INCLUDING CHILDREN FIGURE INCLUDES ACCESS VIA FIXED AND MOBILE CONNECTIONS +1.6% +115 Million Source: We Are Social, 2015 +21% +525 Million FIGURE REPRESENTS ACTIVE USER ACCOUNTS, NOT UNIQUE USERS +12% +222 Million YEAR-ON-YEAR GROWTH FIGURE REPRESENTS UNIQUE MOBILE PHONE USERS +5% +185 Million WORLD NEWSMEDIA NETWORK Penetration 23% FIGURE REPRESENTS ACTIVE USER ACCOUNTS, NOT UNIQUE USERS +23% +313 Million © World Newsmedia Network 2015 Source: We Are Social, 2015; Global Social Media4 Trends 2015, European Publishers Council 10 Digital Media and Society Figure 2: Share of Web Traffic, by Device JAN 2015 SHARE OF WEB TRAFFIC BY DEVICE BASED ON EACH DEVICE'S SHARE OF TOTAL WEB PAGES SERVED SHARE OF WEB PAGE VIEWS: LAPTOPS & DESKTOPS SHARE OF WEB PAGE VIEWS: MOBILE PHONES SHARE OF WEB PAGE VIEWS: TABLETS SHARE OF WEB PAGE VIEWS: OTHER DEVICES 62% YEAR-ON-YEAR: 31% 7% 0.1% YEAR-ON-YEAR: YEAR-ON-YEAR: YEAR-ON-YEAR: -13% We Are Social +39% +17% +18% @wearesocialsg • 19 • Source: StatCounter, Q1 2015 Source: We Are Social, 20159 Figure 3: Global Time Spent onGLOBAL Media Per Day, 2014 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS 2015 Global time spent on media, by type In amount and percentage of time spent Traditional press Online radio 5% Blogging 5% 0.6 hrs. 0.53 hrs. 5% 23% 0.61 hrs. 2.58 hrs. 6% Online TV Traditional TV 0.70 hrs. Online press 6% 0.71 hrs. Micro-blogging 15% Social networking 1.69 hrs. 7% 0.79 hrs. Gaming via console 10% 7% 1.14 hrs. 0.81 hrs. Traditional radio 10% 1.06 hrs. Other online activities Source: GlobalWebIndex, 2014 © World Newsmedia Network 2015 Source: GlobalWebIndex, Social Media Trends European Publishers The largest chunk of time is still2014; spent onGlobal watching traditional In 2014,2015, the average global user spent moreCouncil than six hours online, compared to 5.5 hours in 2012. Almost two hours were spent on social networking and almost an hour was spent The Implications of Digital Media Survey found that 21% on micro-blogging in 2014, compared to just an hour and a half spent on social networking less than an hourspending on of and users report more than three hours per day micro-blogging in 2012. The steady growth of contributions chatting and messaging (Table 3). Most popular platforms from social media platforms is prominently driven by Facebook use, followed by YouTube, according GWI. Thenetworking mix of used fortosocial vary across the countries percentage of time spent on various online activities varies by (Figure 4): WhatsApp is the most visited social country, according to the GWIsurveyed study. television, or 23 percent of the day (2.58 hours), according to GWI, while a growing amount of time is spent on online television, or 6 percent (.61 hours). Meanwhile, 10 percent of the media users' time is spent on radio, and another 5 percent (.61 hours) on online radio. and another 10 percent on non-social networking Internet. Things that started out as communication platforms become Over time, the numberhave of hours spent online, on socialreal-time network and on micro-blogging sites like Twitter have increased. media consumption platforms; content networking site in South Africa and is No 2 in Germany networking is the No. 1 activity online in every country, that feels like a conversation isSocial being andorBrazil, just Facebook. In the USA, however, followed by either micro-blogging online press. Thebehind most Global time spent on social and networks, prolific social networking countries by percentage of time Facebook is by far the most used platform, with more than consumed in video text combined, spent are Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Ireland, 2012-2014 ofKingdom, respondents Australia, Sweden, Poland, thehalf United South Koreavisiting the site daily. In China, WeChat and isnumber accessible on smartphones. In average of hours spent per day and Spain. 7 hours 2012 2013 dominates the other social networking sites listed in terms 2014 6 Participant at project workshop in New York in May 5 4 daily usage. Finally, Brazil respondents are heavier users The most popular countries forofmicro-blogging, by percentage of online time spent, are the Netherlands, Poland, South Afof all the social networking sites included in the survey rica, India, Turkey, Brazil and Saudi Arabia. The most prolific 2015 users of online press are France, Sweden, the UK, Souththose Korea, from other countries. Given the compared with Singapore, Taiwan, the United States, Argentina, Turkey, Indocontinued introduction of new apps, changes in preferred nesia and the Philippines. platforms are likely over time. Why are online communication platforms so The popular? The 3 number of hours spent on social media varies by country. reasons: most users do not pay per message butusers through Those from Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, the Philip2 pines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, mobile plans; they are easy and convenient to use; and 1 while feeds make it possible to always be up-to-date Turkey, Mexicoand and Argentina are by far the biggest users of social private, networking. Those from Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, discover content, messaging applications allow 0 the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States, MexiTotal time Time spent on Time spent on more spent targeted group conversations and content co and exchange. Argentina are the most rabid users of micro-blogging, online social networking micro-blogging according to GWI. Source: GlobalWebIndex, 2014 © World Newsmedia Network 2015 Continued on page 25 18 Digital Media and Society 11 Figure 4: Preferred Social Networking Platforms Per Country Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum People used to watch TV and then that's it. But now, everything is consumed on different mediums. Three out of five people surf the internet, or WeChat in the case of China, while they watch TV. Divided attention is the trend. Yan Xuan, Nielsen Greater China Millennials online The so-called Millennials, or Generation Y (born in the 1980s and 1990s) and Generation Z (born in the 2000s) were the first generations to grow up with computers, the internet and smartphones as integral parts of their everyday lives. These "digital natives" spend on average more than seven hours a day online, on their smartphones or on multiple devices at the same time (PC, laptop, tablet and wearables).10 Those aged 16-24 years are three times as likely as those aged 55-64 years to "second-screen" on a mobile.11 They consume far more digital than physical media (e.g. printed newspapers/books, DVDs and PC games). The Implications of Digital Media Surevy showed that 30% of Millennials spent more than three hours a day chatting/messaging, compared with 20% of Generation X (born in the late 1960s and 1970s) and 15% of Baby Boomers (born in the late 1940s to early 1960s). Similar generational differences were observed for consuming music, short videos and gaming. But Millennials also reported spending more time using digital media to search for information related to interests or personal development. Still, the numbers show that even generations not "born into" the digital age are adapting to it. 12 Digital Media and Society The frequent user is most likely to be young, male, well educated, and have one child: Figure 5 shows that Millennials are more likely to be frequent users (making up 47% of frequent users, compared with 40% of the total sample), while Baby Boomers are more likely to be sporadic users (36% of sporadic users, compared with 29% of the total sample). Almost 60% of frequent users are male, but only 46% of sporadic users (compared with 52% of total sample). Frequent users are more likely to have an undergraduate or graduate degree (57% of frequent users, compared with 45% of the total sample). More than one-half of sporadic users do not have children (54%, compared with 43% of total sample), while frequent users are most likely to have one child (44%, compared with 35% of total sample). Figure 5: User Characteristics, by Level Sporadic Users (%) Frequent Users (%) Total sample (%) Millennials 34 47 40 Generation X 30 31 31 Baby Boomers 36 23 29 46 / 54 58 / 42 52 / 48 45 57 45 54 / 26 / 21 34 / 44 / 22 43 / 35 / 22 Male/female (Under) graduate degree No children/ 1 child/ 1 child Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Users consume, share and engage in content in order to fulfil a need for social interaction, entertainment and learning The emerging digital media user is more active. While traditional media is consumed largely passively, consumers now have enhanced opportunities to share content, engage with content creators, participate in content or even facilitate or sponsor content creation. Consumers have a lot more agency. They are no longer just passive receivers of goods, services and content. Jeremy Heimans, purpose.com So why do consumers use digital media the way they do? UM's Wave 8, a social media research study, suggests that people are drawn to digital media offerings that fulfil five fundamental needs underpinning all social behaviour:12 –– Social interaction (e.g. chatting, messaging, sharing images and videos, building relationships) –– Expression/recognition (e.g. expressing oneself, earning respect, supporting a cause) –– Entertainment/diversion (e.g. having fun, relaxing, being creative, indulging in a passion/interest) –– Information/learning (e.g. learning something new, useful or surprising, getting practical advice, exploring or researching something) –– Work/progression (e.g. working, building a career, challenging oneself) The Implications of Digital Media Survey found that users spend the most time connected online for work (32% spend more than 3 hours a day online for this purpose) and information or learning, followed by social interaction and diversion purposes (Table 3). For each of these purposes, private and professional digital media consumption has become less separated. Younger generations in particular expect to be able to interrupt work to organize private matters while also replying to emails on their smartphones even after working hours. Sharing content has become a very important element of using digital media. The Wave 8 study observes, "Sharing content has become a fundamental part of our selfexpression and has become intrinsically linked with our online reputation. People use content, be it a YouTube clip or interesting article, as a way to keep in touch, make new friends or impress others".13 Participants in the Implications of Digital Media Survey are most likely to share content that is entertaining (46%), contains useful facts (43%) or is inspiring (36%) (Table 4). People want what they've always wanted: storytelling. What has changed is how you do that. HBO's television dramas with their short seasons are powerful examples of how this demand is being met. Likewise, long movies in cinemas targeting the over-35s are a growth market. Instagram is also storytelling. Twitter is essentially iterative storytelling. Participant at project workshop in New York in May 2015 What types of content are users most likely to share? Research has found that video content that is humorous or stimulates deep emotions (such as fear, sadness, surprise, and joy) generally does better than other types.14 A study about content by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania had a similar finding: a strong emotional response to content – whether positive or negative – tends to promote sharing. Content with a positive emotional impact is more likely to be shared than one that has a negative impact; content that produced anger and anxiety is more likely to be shared than one producing sadness.15 The Wave 8 study also investigated motivations for sharing content: when people share inspiring content they do so to express their creativity and to learn; when they share controversial content, they are trying to seek opinion. Promoting a cause helps people to belong, change opinions and earn respect (see Figure 6). Digital Media and Society 13 Figure 6: Different Motivations for Sharing Different Content Question: Why do you think someone would share content that is inspiring/promotes a cause/is controversial? To meet new people LEARNING To seek others opinions To explore the world around them 35% RELATIONSHIP Stay in touch with friends 30% Feel a sense of belonging 25% To keep up-to-date Feel companionship 20% To learn something new 15% To "hang out"/ waste time 10% To share knowledge 5% To have fun/ be entertained 0 To escape from everyday life To earn the respect of others To express themselves To be creative DIVERSION To promote themselves To make money To change people's opinion To build their career To share new experiences Express their emotions To make contacts for work RECOGNITION Inspiring content PROGRESSION Content that promotes a cause Controversial content Source: Wave 8 – The Language of Content, UM global study Q: Now we would like you to think about why other people share the kinds of content you said you like. Why do you think someone would share content that… Base: Global - Value that type of content How content goes viral is an interesting phenomenon. Pulsar found that different types of content spread differently across social media platforms, depending on audience structure.16 For example, a YouTube video titled "Commander Hadfield singing David Bowie's Space Oddity", from the International Space Station, spread mainly from one big hub, while a grassroots video of protests in Turkey was shared by many smaller influencer groups (Figure 7). Figure 7: Diffusion Maps Showing the Pattern of Tweets and Re-tweets for Different Videos Blue nodes = tweeters. Yellow nodes = re-tweeters. Size = author visibility, i.e. estimated reach Source: How Stuff Spreads #2: How Videos Go Viral, Pulsar 14 Digital Media and Society Sharing content also seems to depend on its efficacy in helping users to build their online reputations. As the Wave 8 study emphasizes, digital media has helped launch a new reputation economy in which "personal success and reputation have become indelibly linked". Thus, content that reflects well on an individual or helps to promote a personal "brand" is most likely to be shared: useful facts or research; novel or unexpected ideas and execution; entertaining or inspiring content; expressions of the user's point of view; and content that has been "liked" by relevant others. The importance of reputation building can be discerned in users' reported reactions to how the content they share is received by others. More than one-half of respondents in the Wave 8 study said they feel happy "when something they share is commented on, liked or shared with others", and they are likely to actually "delete posts and tweets that have received no recognition from peers".17 Digital media also has made it possible for millions of media consumers to participate in content, mainly through the creation process. They do it for many reasons. Participants in the Implications of Digital Media Survey reported being most likely to create content, such as blog posts or videos, to express their points of view (47%), provide useful facts (37%) or entertain (35%) (Table 5). One-third of respondents stated that they post written content, pictures or videos on social media sites a few times per week; 10% of them do it every day. According to a report by Pew Research Center, an American think-tank, almost one-third of adults online in the USA posted a video to a website in 2013, up from 14% in 2009.18 Some of this content creation is fuelled by the desire to become actively engaged with an admired entity. Enabled by the internet, fans with an emotional attachment to the focus of their ardour – a sports team, celebrity or artist – now have the opportunity to consume content related to that admired subject and to share that content or create their own, thereby engaging with it and/or the larger community of fans. These motivated content participants – labelled an "active audience" by Jose van Dijck – are the main leaders in sharing, creating and producing new content on social media.19 Also interesting is the communal spirit in which much of today's content is created. YouTube has a significant number "how-to" video posts, produced not necessarily by companies promoting their products or services, but by individuals eager to share their knowledge with the online community. Likewise, the tremendous amount of information available on Wikipedia and other open content publishing sites is the result of countless individuals contributing labour and knowledge, often without expecting payment. The growth of content sharing through social media creates a "collective experience" and a state of virtual collective consciousness among digital media consumers, with shared beliefs, ideas and moral attitudes.20 21 For example, trust in brands is now being heavily influenced by shared user experiences.22 The more these experiences are shared through digital media, the more consumers are vulnerable to views, opinions and thinking that are not their own. This may result in group-thinking and could suppress individualism. For example, users are more likely to consume content that has been previously accessed and recommended by others (e.g. YouTube videos that go viral). Many of today's buying decisions are made on the collective knowledge/experience shared by others (e.g. Amazon book reviews). Consumer trust at risk The continuous innovation in digital media, and the rapid way it has changed business practices and user behaviour, creates unprecedented opportunities for the MEI industry. But as these opportunities mature, consumer trust becomes ever more critical. This report's research reveals that fundamental concerns about truth, integrity and security are placing consumer trust at risk: 1. Truth: Given the sheer volume of digital content, trust hangs in the balance because of the difficulty in validating truthfulness and the increased ability of users to challenge the veracity of content. 2. Integrity and the fair value proposition: Trust in companies is at stake and digital media consumers are demanding protection for user rights. 3. Security: Consumers fear that their data are not adequately protected. They value and demand more transparency and control over their personal data and digital identities. Addressing these challenges is essential for the continued health of the MEI industry. 1. Truth: With more and more content available, consumers are searching for trusted sources of digital media content There are now more tools at people's disposal to do professional filming. The barriers of entry are so much lower. It's up to the voice of the user. What you couldn't do at the top studios 10 years ago, you can now do for free. Participant at project workshop in New York in May 2015 Innovations in digital media have lowered barriers to content creation. Today, anyone can create and publish content; it is no longer the sole purview of professional content producers such as journalists. This is allowing more voices to be heard and empowering users to not just express themselves but also to choose among diverse content. This "democratization" of content creates increased quality control issues. In the digital age, almost any citizen can be a journalist, but maintaining journalistic standards is today a major challenge for the industry. Although content can now be more easily challenged and verified, in many cases, content creators and consumers do not adequately vet sources. Lack of professional editing, and the time pressure to publish content quickly, also create quality problems. The Digital Media and Society 15 ease of creation has increased the risk of unethical online behaviour, with the posting and sharing of content designed to deceive, defame or misinform. However, users are better equipped to use digital media platforms to draw attention to misinformation, challenge myths and educate others. The large amount of content available has made curating and distributing a much bigger challenge. Users themselves have become an important mechanism for distribution. Rather than rely on the judgement of editors or decisionmakers in the traditional media ecosystem, many users today are choosing to obtain more content from their social and professional networks, or to rely on others for reviews or recommendations. In particular, entry barriers to publishing become lower, while creators still rely on professional support for larger scale publishing. According to the 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer, search engines are now the most trusted source of content for users, especially Millennials, while journalists are trusted less than family and friends. The trend towards a "collective experience", as described in the previous section, is also a result of the digital media user's dependency on seeking truth from groups of other users. I don't need to believe in anything anymore because it has a user rating of 4.6. So the whole notion of trust is now earned largely by collective experience rather than the symbols of faith. Sanjay Nazerali, Dentsu Aegis Network The Implications of Digital Media Survey has similar findings. A user's spouse and friends (each chosen by 18% of respondents) have the most influence on digital media consumption), while search engines are selected by 15% as being more influential than any other source (Table 6). Those close to the user could have more insight into the type of content the user might find interesting, certainly more than could an editor or executive in a traditional media company; however, individuals could also receive less diverse information, or others in the user's network could distribute unverified, harmful or inaccurate content. Interestingly, the survey yielded substantial cross-country differences – especially among those choosing none as the most influential source In the USA, almost one-half of the sample said so, in China only 5%. This underlines the relevance of culturally specific norms, in this case most likely regarding individualism versus collectivism.23 Given today's immense task of sifting through copious amounts of content in order to decide what to distribute, MEI distributors are turning to artificial intelligence and automation. But, consumer trust depends on the transparency and effectiveness of algorithms to do this job. This trust is at risk as evidence becomes available on how algorithms are structurally biased in the information they 16 Digital Media and Society present to different users or are ineffective in screening out inaccurate content. If the MEI industry does not innovate in products and services to help users to assess the validity of content sources or to access verified content, consumer trust in the entire MEI ecosystem may be eroded. 2. Integrity and the fair value proposition: Users are willing to pay for products and services that fulfil their needs; the higher the perceived value, the greater the willingness to pay Because digital media offers more content than can be reasonably consumed, much of it for free, a consumer's willingness to pay remains a key challenge for industry. Several studies on consumer readiness to pay for Facebook (in exchange for privacy or no advertising), for example, found little appetite for it.24 Inherent to social media's existence is the exchange of non-monetary value. For Facebook, this is access and use of behavioural information for advertising purposes in exchange for free utilization of a robust social networking tool for the end user. News has also proved difficult to monetize in the digital space; according to Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2015, few of those not already paying would be prepared to pay anything for online news.25 But the idea of consumer reluctance to pay ignores the success of many digital media content providers. As in any marketplace, consumers of digital media are willing to pay for products that fulfil their needs and offer good perceived value. Digital media users have shown that they see value in, and are willing to pay for: –– Unique and high-quality content, such as that offered by HBO or The New York Times (NYT). The NYT recently surpassed 1 million digital subscribers despite the relative ease of circumventing its paywall.26 –– Content that satisfies a burning need, such as Bloomberg's sale of business information to the trades, or demand in a niche market (professional and hobbies, for example).27 –– A unique offering that fills a newly created need or gives consumers the flexibility to buy fragmented content, such as iTunes, which offers songs rather than albums, or Blendle, a Dutch start-up that gives consumers the ability to buy individual newspaper or magazine articles rather than full subscriptions.28 The Implications of Digital Media Survey provided similar insights. In the past year, one-third of respondents had paid for premium entertainment, and one-fifth for specialized, exclusive or educational content that teaches skills or gives access to work (Table 7). Interestingly, those who use digital media the most are more willing to pay for content, with Millennials reporting the greatest appetite – heartening for content providers targeting this important demographic (Figure 8). Figure 8: Willingness to Pay for Digital Content, by Use Level and Generation (%) Paying for Content by Source, % Frequent Users Sporadic Users Millennials Generation X Baby Boomers Millennials Generation X Baby Boomers Premium entertainment content (e.g. Netflix, Spotify or gaming content) 50 49 36 29 20 10 Exclusive content (e.g. HBO Online) 35 34 26 10 7 4 Content that teaches me skills or abilities (e.g. online university courses) 34 32 23 13 7 6 Specialized content or service (e.g. specific to a hobby) 32 27 20 9 7 6 Content that gives me access to work opportunities (e.g. paid job postings) 22 25 18 11 10 6 Curated news or editorial content (e.g. Financial Times) 22 19 16 6 4 4 Other 1 0 2 1 1 2 None of the above 16 19 34 52 62 76 Content Sources Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 17 At the same time, 41% of total survey respondents do not pay for any of the listed content, highlighting the continuing importance of advertising to finance digital media that is mainly free to the user. A major challenge for the MEI industry will be to counter the current trend in advertising blocking by users. (This is discussed in greater detail later in this report.) Regardless of how digital media is funded, providing a fair value proposition is critical to maintain consumer trust. To do this could require the MEI industry to rely on advertising that respects user preferences for valued digital media, without the risk of misleading (a possibility with sponsored content) or exploiting the consumer. Exploitation can occur when advertising is based on behavioural data that the user did not consent to sharing. Or it can happen when transparency about the use of one's personal data is lacking, and the consumer is not offered appropriate benefits in exchange, such as free online services.29 When the value exchange between user and business is perceived to be fair, consumers seem willing to "pay" for digital media content. For example, although it is still technically possible to pirate music, free music-streaming services like Spotify, for which consumers "pay" through their exposure to advertising, are easier for consumers to use, and have helped to cut the incidence of music piracy in the USA by half over the past decade.30 Research by Boston Consulting Group and Liberty Global showed that consumers "are willing, even eager, to share information when they get an appropriate benefit in return". The research found that educating consumers on the benefits they receive by sharing their data, being transparent about how the data are used, and giving consumers easyto-use privacy controls "will substantially increase data sharing by individuals". 31 3. Security: As consumers' digital personae increasingly reflect their online habits and behaviours, digital identities are becoming as important and as worthy of protection as physical personae The cumulative use of digital media – from online buying, viewing, posting and sharing, to digital profiles created for personal, social, professional or commercial reasons – reveals a tremendous amount about each individual. Yet many users remain unaware that their increased digital engagement results in the accumulation of data from many disparate sources. These traces of personal data can be tagged, tracked, combined and analysed, revealing more intimate information about users than previously imagined. 18 Digital Media and Society Digital personae not only determine the content that users are served online, but also influence the schools to which they are admitted, approvals they get for loans or apartments, and the jobs they are offered. They also may have an impact on an individual's romantic prospects and status within certain communities. In short, users' digital personae are increasingly important to their social and economic well-being. For example, many users today see social networks not just as places to connect with others socially but also as engines to create financial benefits. Platform membership can improve professional networking and job prospects, and help people to amass a considerable, profitable following. But even as users want to share their personality online and gain recognition, they also want to safeguard their digital personae and control access. Google's Transparency Report recently revealed that the search engine has already received almost 350,000 requests from users who want to evoke their "right to be forgotten" after a 2014 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, and has removed almost 60% (more than 600,000) of more than 1.2 million URLs evaluated.32 Building and maintaining consumer trust will depend increasingly on how well MEI businesses address user concerns about security. Among Implications of Digital Media Survey respondents, 69% said that anonymity and privacy in digital media activities is important to them (Table 8) and 25% said that less than half of their social media activity is publicly visible (Table 9). Users fear data breaches which appear to be increasing in scale and frequency. As a result, they are looking to companies for security and transparency about the use and safeguarding of their data. Users also are concerned about how their data are being used to market to them. The majority of respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey said that the "right to be forgotten" is important to them (71%), as is having control over their personal data (75%). But only 46% globally are willing to pay for that control (Table 10), with large crosscountry differences observed. Consumers seem reluctant to pay for privacy or control of data, not necessarily because they do not value these attributes, but rather because they view them as already integral to the services they use. Emerging digital media users consider control over their data an inherent right for which they should not need to pay. Digital Media and Society 19 Section 2 User Engagement Engaging and influencing the digital consumer requires a novel approach The challenge facing the advertising sector According to comScore, a global media measurement and analytics company that collaborated on the Implications of Digital Media Survey, the average user is bombarded by more than 1,700 digital banner advertisements each month, making it difficult for businesses to make a memorable impression.35 While up to one-half of global respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey said that they are likely to click on different types of advertisement when actively searching a similar product, only onequarter of users in the USA are likely to do so (Table 11a and Table 11b). More concerning is the fact that display advertisements cannot be shared – an important way for content to gain user attention. In fact, about two-thirds of respondents state they are likely to express support for a brand through social media within their peer groups (Table 12). With the initial digitization of the MEI industry, marketers applied the same approach to reach consumers as they did for traditional media channels like print and television. Digital advertising offered new forms of engagement, but the underlying model of "pushing" messages out to consumers in a recognized advertisement format did not significantly change. Publishers have historically designed webpages with more regard for the advertiser than the digital media user, something referred to as Advertising 1.0 by Johnny Ryan of PageFair, a tech start-up exploring the growing issue of advertisement blocking.33 According to Ryan, industry – publishing in particular – must move to Advertising 2.0, which focuses on the end user experience and revisits the quality of digital advertising. Despite a slowdown in advertising growth over the past few years, Advertising 1.0 has historically been successful, generating billions of dollars for the advertising industry and satisfying brands.34 But digital media consumption patterns are evolving: content sharing has become effortless and popular; consumers have become more invested in sharing and creating content that enhances their online reputations; and technology has enabled both the blocking of display advertising and the collection of more detailed information about user interests. Marketers who master the art of communicating to consumers through meaningful content, targeted in a non-invasive and personalized manner, stand a better chance of fruitfully engaging the end user. The higher the usage, the greater the willingness to pay High-intensity digital media users are twice as likely as low-intensity users to click on online advertising. But, within the frequent-user group, Millennials are least likely to respond to online advertising (Figure 9). Figure 9: Likelihood of Clicking on Selected Types of Advertising while Actively Looking for a Similar Product, by Use Level and Generation (%) % Agreeing They Would Click when Actively Looking Frequent Users Type of online advertising Sporadic Users Millennials Generation X Baby Boomers Millennials Generation X Baby Boomers Pre-rolls (short video advertisements) to video content 56 66 61 27 28 26 Banner advertisements on web or mobile pages 53 65 62 26 29 28 Advertisements embedded in social media news feeds 58 67 58 29 28 26 Advertisements on search engine results pages 60 71 65 33 39 40 Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum 20 Digital Media and Society A development that may prove the most disruptive to display advertising, however, is the popularity of advertising blocking software, commonly known as ad blocking. Citing recent data, a report issued in August 2015 by Adobe and PageFair, an ad-blocking measurement service, notes that 6% of internet users worldwide actively block advertisements. The Adobe/PageFair study shows that ad blocking rose an impressive 41% in second-quarter 2015 from the corresponding quarter in 2014.36 Ad blocking is most popular with Millennials, 41% of whom said they use ad-blocking tools.37 Ad blocking in video, the fastestgrowing, most-important content format for the MEI industry, is even more prevalent, with rates as high as 62% for desktop video in Germany.38 A report by Sourcepoint and comScore finds that consumers who block the most advertisements are those most attractive to publishers – people with higher incomes.39 Unmonetized Video Time Due To Adblock: Global The10: topTop 28 countries forfor adblocked videoBlocked time Video Time Figure 28 Countries Advertisement Germany 62% Austria 53% Canada 43% United Kingdom 42% Greece 42% Spain 41% Poland 40% Portugal 39% New Zealand 38% Australia 38% Finland 38% Sweden 37% Ireland 37% Romania 36% Croatia 35% Norway 34% France 33% Belgium 30% Denmark 29% Colombia 28% Israel 26% Italy 26% Chile 26% Mexico 26% United States 25% Ukraine 25% Argentina 23% Ecuador 23% Russia 22% MA Morocco 20% Source: Adblock and the Global Video Market, September 2015, Secret Media40 Note: Percentage of time spent in front of desktop video that is blocked from monetization. In each of the countries measured, 30% or more of the internet-usage population was reached. SECRET MEDIA | ADBLOCK AND THE GLOBAL VIDEO MARKET 11 Digital Media and Society 21 But why are consumers blocking digital advertisements? Research conducted in 2015 by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a global non-profit group for the online advertising industry, concluded that the rise in ad blocking by consumers is mainly due to a general antipathy towards advertising, as well as user concern about how their viewing behaviour is being tracked and used by third parties.41 Indeed, the Implications of Digital Media Survey found that 35% of respondents worldwide have installed third-party ad-blocking tools, and 34% have activated privacy control settings on digital browsers to block third-party trackers and cookies (Table 13). Users in the USA are least likely to block advertisements or activate privacy controls – 69% of USA respondents had no privacy or ad-blocking tools installed, but German and Chinese users are most likely to use advertising and privacy controls.. I think ad blockers themselves are not going to help the industry, they're not going to help the user, because the quality of content won't be there, but I do think the industry needs to make sure that it focuses on the creativity and quality of its advertising. Mark Thompson, The New York Times These findings highlight three emerging consumer psychological traits that seem to be fairly consistent across geography and demographics: a desire to be in control of the messaging to which individuals are exposed, where "pulling" this messaging to one's screen is preferred to having it "pushed" by marketers; a rejection of having online behaviour tracked without fully understanding how that data are ultimately used; and a growing awareness of personal data's business and commercial value to businesses. Engaging digital media users through content marketing In reaction to the decreasing effectiveness and reach of traditional display advertising "pushed" to consumers, more companies are turning towards content marketing to "pull" customers into brands. By developing valuable content (as opposed to "clickbaits", sensationalist headlines or images to attract click-throughs), marketers hope to not only attract users but also encourage them to share that content. Paid advertising certainly is not going away anytime soon, but the new marketing model emphasizes the creation of content that, because of the value it delivers, enables a brand to "earn" media (i.e. obtain publicity that is free and not gained through advertising). The goal is to encourage consumers themselves to become the conduit for the company's marketing messages. The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer found that content produced by a company that a user patronizes is more trusted than content produced by a journalist or an NGO.42 This finding underlines the importance for brands to develop 22 Digital Media and Society customer engagement and loyalty, because loyal customers can be expected to share compelling content with others in their networks and act as multipliers. It is essential, however, to create and publish content in ways that maintain consumer trust. Based on a survey conducted in the United Kingdom and the USA on consumer attitudes towards sponsored content and "native advertising" on news sites, Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2015 found that one-third or more respondents feel disappointed or deceived after reading an article later found to have been sponsored; and more than one-quarter are less positive about the news brand due to the sponsored content or native advertising.43 The promise and perils of using consumer data for targeted marketing Several issues have the potential to undermine the trust that digital media users have in the industry, as discussed earlier in this report. One issue pertains to the way consumer data are used, analysed and sold. Data generated by individuals intentionally through their use of digital media can help businesses to develop products and services that are better aligned to consumer needs, giving users access to more desirable products and services at a lower cost.44 But data also can be used to undermine the credibility of digital media players. Consider the case reported in early 2015 of a cancer patient, who, after using Google to research his disease, subsequently was fed advertisements from funeral directors via his Facebook account – blurring the boundary between personal data privacy and the creation of relevant, targeted advertisements.45 More insightful and less intrusive approaches to collecting and using consumer viewership data are essential to build consumer trust. potential of employee networks; they have started to move away from compliance management towards enabling their employees to create conversations on social media about the company and the brand.47 A brand's visibility on social media is important for engaging consumers – especially those aged 16-24 years Becoming part of the conversation through innovative messaging is quickly becoming the industry's norm for effective marketing. A brand's visibility and engagement strategy on social media platforms has proved important to draw in the emerging digital media consumer, especially in the age group of 16-24 years. The Internet Advertising Bureau's Mediascope Europe study in 2013 found that 32% of this age group is more likely to buy a product from a brand they follow on a social networking site than one they do not. Moreover, 83% of those in this age group have liked or become a friend of a brand online, while 76% have visited a brand's fan page.46 The Implications of Digital Media Survey showed that 64% of Millennials, 69% of Generation X and 61% of Baby Boomer respondents are likely to express support for a brand through social media within their peer groups (the global average is 65%). The importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in engaging digital media consumers Evidence of social responsibility by media and entertainment brands significantly influences consumer choice, shows the Implications of Digital Media Survey. A leading concern is corporate transparency, particularly related to a company's efforts to educate customers on storage and use of their personal data and to provide them full control to decide – 72% of respondents worldwide consider it most important, along with environmental sustainability, among possible CSR activities (Table 14). As digital media continues to become an integral aspect of people's lives, CSR's influence on consumer choice is likely to continue to grow. However, contradicting a general belief that Millennials are enthusiastic supporters of corporate transparency and involvement in social and environmental issues ("Corporate Social Responsibility is Millennials' New Religion" says one headline), the Implications of Digital Media Survey found that Generation X and Baby Boomers respondents place greater weight on these factors than do Millennials (Figure 11).48 Engaging consumers through employee advocacy Another marketing strategy that can help to curtail the impact of ad blocking is employee advocacy. Employee advocacy does not depend on the advertising sector because it grows corporate brand value through employee networks, mainly on social media platforms that can be influenced by creative employee enablement and evangelization. In other words, employee advocacy is wordof-mouth marketing through corporate assets. This strategy has influenced a shift in the attitude of businesses towards their employees' social media use. A growing number of companies have realized the massive Figure 11: Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts that Are Important for MEI Companies to Support, by Use Level and Generation (%) % Agreeing Those Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts are Important for MEI Companies to Actively Support Frequent Users Sporadic Users Millennials Generation X Baby Boomers Millennials Generation X Baby Boomers Environmental sustainability 76 83 83 54 60 70 Ethical labour practices 75 83 80 51 58 65 Philanthropy 65 72 72 44 48 47 Social impact accountability 74 80 81 49 53 54 Corporate transparency 75 84 82 55 62 69 Elements Digital Media and Society 23 Best practices: winning over the emerging media consumer Much can be learned from successful examples of digital engagement within the MEI industry. Authenticity and user control, transparency, service accountability and emotional story-telling are all important attributes for digital media consumers in choosing services and platforms, as well as the content to consume, share and participate in. Consider the following illustrations of best practices. The New York Times Finding healthy revenue models while garnering consumer trust and fulfilling customer preferences is a challenge. The New York Times (NYT) was tested by the industry's digitization, but managed to stay relevant to its customer base, acquire new consumers and innovate. Several factors contributed to the NYT's digital success, but one in particular has strengthened its brand identity through effective segmentation – the NYT manages to serve the right content, in the right format, to each of its reader segments. This is such a strong value proposition in today's world of overloaded news content that the company has managed to charge a fee for the service. Of the NYT's 33 different newsletters, subscribers open 70%, which is a great example of how important relevancy is to heightened user engagement and ultimately trust.49 Netflix Effective segmentation brings more precise data on consumption patterns and preferences. Industry players that employ personal usage data to provide the right benefits to consumers, will be the best placed to charge for their services while simultaneously building loyalty. Netflix owes much of its success to its proprietary content algorithm, whose function is clearly visible to its users.50 In fact, this algorithm generated the data and Intel required for Netflix to design and produce the perfect television series for its viewers, allowing Netflix to make the decision to invest $100 million in 26 episodes (two full seasons) of House of Cards – a strong sign of service accountability. LinkedIn Digital businesses that manage to instil a sense of authenticity in their brand will ultimately attract the most users. This reflects user tendencies to value products and services that help them to build and protect online reputations. LinkedIn is a good example: 400 million people 24 Digital Media and Society are currently on LinkedIn, which equates to approximately one in three of the world's professionals.51 The service is fundamentally free, with only 39% of its user base paying for the premium service. A key selling feature of LinkedIn is its ability to build authentic online identities that can essentially be certified by public verification through peer and manager reviews, endorsements and news feed engagement. MasterCard and WestJet Authenticity in the way businesses tap into user emotions is paramount in customer engagement strategies that drive participation in content and ultimately the shareability of brand messaging. With its A Mother's Day to Remember campaign in 2014, MasterCard was able to generate brand visibility by establishing an emotional tie with a subject of global relevance, our mothers.52 In doing so, MasterCard had no need to actually advertise anything. Authenticity in the company's gesture was enough to imprint MasterCard as trustworthy and genuine organization. WestJet, a Canadian domestic airline, used a similar strategy in 2013 with its Christmas Miracle campaign, pushing the brand to international stardom with more than 42 million YouTube views (and counting).53 Such authenticity in the search for an emotional bond with the user is increasingly becoming the norm in digital content creation and marketing strategy. Interestingly, both the MasterCard and WestJet campaigns highlight the benefit of physical user participation in successfully engaging consumers digitally. Facebook With currently more than 1.5 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide. The company has much influence on a significant part of the world's population and thus Facebook's responsibility for respecting user rights and preferences is of utmost importance. On its mission "to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected", corporate transparency and social responsibility form an important cornerstone. Facebook has an extensive Data Policy and has done much in past years to make it more comprehensible and to give users more control of their privacy settings, e.g. the "privacy check-up" and "ad preferences" tools.54, 55, 56 Facebook also issues a Government Requests Report on how requests received from governments are handled. 57 Digital Media and Society 25 Section 3 Impact of Digital Media on Individuals, Organizations and Society The increased use of digital media is changing people's everyday lives and the way they connect and collaborate in the broader societal context, at work and in civil society. Much of the impact of this heightened use is beneficial to both individuals and society. It is enabling unprecedented levels of communication, social interaction and community building across boundaries of time, place and social context. It is enabling individuals and speeding up the democratization of knowledge. New learning methods are possible (as has been evidenced by the World Economic Forum's New Vision for Education project), as are ways of working, which are providing better opportunities to people in under-served communities and regions. 58 But not all the impacts of increased use of digital media are positive. Research indicates that when humans excessively use digital media it can negatively influence their cognitive and behavioural development and even their mental and physical health. Hyperconnectivity, the increasing digital interconnection of people and things, has the potential to change patterns of social interaction, as face-to-face time may be substituted by online interaction. In addition, greater technology enablement of work (and the resulting fragmentation of jobs) threatens the security of jobs traditionally considered as skilled in the developed world. Whether individuals see the impact of increased digital media use as positive or negative depends greatly on where they live. The Implications of Digital Media Survey showed that only about one-quarter of respondents from Germany and the USA think that digital media has improved the quality of their social, professional and overall lives. By contrast, about two-thirds of respondents in Brazil and China believe this. Respondents in South Africa are roughly split on the question (Table 15). However, despite believing that digital media has improved their lives, a higher percentage of respondents in Brazil and China also believes they should reduce usage (3344%). Meanwhile, only one-fifth and one-quarter of users in Germany and the USA, respectively, think they should do so (Table 15). These country differences are enlightening, even after accounting for cultural differences in survey response patterns. 26 Digital Media and Society Clearly, it is important to understand the opportunities and the risks in increased digital media usage, so that both industry and users can learn how best to exploit the benefits while mitigating the negative effects. Benefits and Opportunities 1. Digital media facilitates social interaction and empowers people Digital media connects people in ways never before possible, enabling users to maintain friendships across time and distance. It enables those who are socially isolated or somehow set apart from their immediate physical community to connect with like-minded or like-situated people. Digital media also facilitates interaction across social, economic, cultural, political, religious and ideological boundaries, allowing for enhanced understanding. Many people access social media platforms to express empathy and receive support from friends and family, including in times of emotional distress. This enriches people's relationships and their ability to stay in touch, and the ability of friends and family to identify and help loved ones in need. According to a 2015 survey by Pew Research Center, the use of social technology is linked to having a greater number of close confidants, as well as a larger, more diverse social circle. Another Pew survey showed that 57% of teens state they have made a new friend online, and 83% state that social media makes them feel more connected and informed about their friends' lives.59 Social media can help to deepen relationships and facilitate the formation of support networks – 68% of teen social media users have received support on these platforms during tough times. A study by Vaughan Bell and colleagues found that adolescents' use of social networking sites enhances existing friendships and the quality of relationships for those who use digital social networks to deal with social challenges. Those who use online social networks to avoid social difficulties, however, tend to exhibit reduced wellbeing.60 By facilitating social interaction, digital media also appears to lower stress for at least some users. A separate Pew Research Center survey in 2015 of 1,801 American adults concluded that digital media users do not have higher levels of stress than others.61 This makes sense, especially for those who perform knowledge work and are aided by the greater access that digital media provides to colleagues and information. Moreover, Pew researchers found that digital media actually mitigated stress for women who use Twitter, email and cell phone picture sharing to build relationships.62 The same study did find, however, that digital media makes some people more aware of stressful events in others' lives, resulting in higher reported levels of tension. (Other findings on the negative impact of digital media consumption on stress are discussed later in this report.) 2. Digital media gives people a voice, increases civic participation and facilitates the creation of communities While traditional media has long been central to informing the public and focusing public attention on particular subjects, digital media is helping to amplify the response to humanitarian crises and to support those afflicted by these crises. During the Arab Spring of 2011-2012, digital media served as a vehicle to mobilize resources, organize protests and draw global attention to the events.63, 64 Through digital media, users around the world collected $2 million in just two days for victims of the Nepal earthquake of 2015.65 Refugees fleeing the war in Syria have cited Google Maps and Facebook groups as sources of information that helped them to not only plan travel routes but to also avoid human traffickers.66 Digital media has also enhanced information sharing across the world, giving people much greater access to facts, figures, statistics, and similar, allowing that information to circulate much faster. This not only enables people to respond in real time as events unfold, but also helps to expose political corruption and unfair business practices. For example, when a pharmaceutical company made plans to raise the price of a particular drug by more than 5,000%, outrage spread quickly through digital media, forcing the company to reverse direction.67 Digital media is also allowing people around the world to build communities, organize action and make their voices heard on a multitude of issues. Through online petitions and charities, people across the cybersphere can act on causes about which they care. Change.org, which helps individuals to start petitions and advance their causes, has enabled more than 123 million users to attain their own goals on almost 15,000 issues in 196 countries, according to its website.68 Avaaz.org is another example of a platform with the goal of enabling people to take action on pressing global, regional and national issues, from corruption and poverty to conflict and climate change.69 Through the site Witness.org, thousands of activists and citizens around the world have been trained and supported to use video safely, ethically and effectively to expose human-rights abuses and fight for change.70 For refugees currently coming to Europe, websites and applications such as refugees-welcome. net, refugee-action.org.uk and workeer.de are helping coordination of action among people who are physically dispersed. Similarly, digital media is helping people to support chosen causes financially. According to a report by Blackbaud, a non-profit software and services provider, online giving is growing, particularly in response to humanitarian disasters.71 Websites such as #GivingTuesday, YouCaring.com, JustGiving.com and DonorsChoose.com are funnelling donations from millions of donors to the causes of their choice. Of course, the ease with which individuals and organizations can build and disseminate communications on different issues and crises also creates the risk of weakening long-term support as users are bombarded with information or requests for help on more issues than they can handle. Additionally, an instrument for a good cause can also be used for a bad one (see discussion on downsides and risks later in the report). Digital Media and Society 27 Studies examining the impact of digital media on civic engagement have had mixed findings. Exploring the effects of social networking sites on offline behaviour, a 2015 metastudy by Shelley Boulianne of Grant MacEwan University in Canada found that while the correlation between the use of social networking sites and election-campaign participation is weak, the relationship with civic engagement is stronger.72 However, research indicates that messages on social media can significantly influence voting patterns. A study of the impact of certain messages posted on Facebook and promoted by friends on Election Day during the 2010 elections in the USA "increased turnout directly by about 60,000 voters and indirectly by another 280,000 voters through social contagion, for a total of 340,000 additional votes".73 This suggests that online political mobilization works, but it raises the issue of potential manipulation of digital media users and their political action, even when considering that digital media platforms give the opportunity to identify and challenge instances of manipulation. This report's research into the impact of digital media on civic participation also reveals mixed findings. While a majority of respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey in China and Brazil say that digital media has had an overall positive effect on their civic participation, a lessrobust percentage of respondents in South Africa, and even smaller percentages in the USA and Germany say this is so (Table 16). Similarly, respondents in Brazil (47%) and China (36%) are more likely to have taken action on a political or social issue because of something read on a social networking site, than are respondents from South Africa (22%), Germany (25%) or the USA (12%) (Table 17). Across the five countries, about one out of five respondents uses social networking sites to share political information or encourage action on political issues a few times per week (Table 18). 2. Digital media is changing how work gets done, boosting productivity and enhancing flexibility for workers and employers Digitization of content and data, as well as new digital communication technologies, have opened up novel opportunities for where, when, how and by whom work gets done. This is changing the nature of the employment relationship. Many jobs now can be done anywhere, at any time, facilitated by the availability of digital data, high speed internet, and better messaging, audio and video technology. 28 Digital Media and Society We see job opportunities in the freelance and "gig" economies in roles that you wouldn't have been able to previously see 15-20 years ago – anything from marketing to executive roles to medical. Sara Sutton Fell, flexjobs.com A Pew Research Center study of American adults in 2014 found that among full- and part-time workers, 21% work outside their workplace every day or almost every day, and 59% does that at least occasionally.74 Digitization is a major enabler of this trend, with one-half reporting that the internet and mobile are "very important" to allowing them to do their job remotely, and another 24% saying that these tools are "somewhat important". This same study also found that 46% of employed internet users feel their productivity has increased because of their use of the internet, email and mobile or smartphones; only 7% feel less productive. Half of internet-using workers say these technologies have expanded the number of people outside their company with whom they communicate; 39% state it allows them more flexibility in the hours they work; and 35% say it has increased the number of hours they work. These findings echo results from the Implications of Digital Media Survey, in which respondents rate digital media as having an even bigger positive effect on their work lives than on their private or public lives, with particular benefits to their ability to find work, do work, develop professionally and collaborate with colleagues (Table 19). Although social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn were not identified as important tools for online workers in the 2014 Pew Research Center study, professional communication and collaboration platforms have high future potential. For example, the Royal Bank of Scotland recently introduced "Facebook at Work" to "encourage collaboration and allow employees to communicate faster and more efficiently" as it stimulates non-hierarchical communication and discussion.75 Slack, one of the most highly valued start-ups in recent times, with currently 1.7 million daily active users, exemplifies how virtually all knowledge, information and data related to work can be managed within one platform. Its users claim to have cut email volume by almost half, improved transparency and offline culture significantly, and increased overall productivity by one-third.76 Workers demand the same usability and features of their private communication tools for their professional ones. The Implications of Digital Media Survey results mirror these findings: almost 70% of participants agree that the use of digital media for work-related purposes has already grown significantly and that it will continue to do so in the future (Table 20). The changes in work that digitization and digital media have facilitated bring several advantages for workers, employers and society at large. Beyond enhanced productivity, the greater flexibility afforded by digital media allows for better work-life integration – a critical element in enabling workers to effectively juggle multiple roles as workers and caregivers. On a larger scale, higher work flexibility is helping to equalize and globalize work opportunities for people living in remote areas, those who are less mobile, or living in countries with less developed or struggling economies. Talent platforms, like Upwork, Topcoder and Tongal, are facilitating the placement of free agents with companies, and giving them additional options for getting work done. In the emerging "gig economy", workers might no longer hold full-time jobs with fixed job descriptions, but could be employed for particular tasks for a defined period of time. Even as digitization enables the greater democratization of work, it also places a premium on certain types of work (particularly those involved in the development, manipulation and leverage of technology and data). A McKinsey & Company study suggests that employers worldwide face a potential shortage of 38-40 million skilled workers and a potential surplus of 90-95 million low-skill workers by 2020.78 These "friction points" give rise to new ways of accessing talent and getting work done. In 2011, more than 22% of the global workforce could be classified as contingent (i.e. not employees in the traditional sense).79 In 2014, one in three Americans in the workforce was freelance, according to a recent survey by Freelancers Union.80 Moreover, according to Workforce 2020, a global study by Oxford Economics and SAP, one finding (which allows multiple choices) shows that an impressive 83% of companyrespondents use: contingent workers (41%, i.e. independent contractors, part-timers, or temporary or leased employees), consultants (34%), intermittent employees (35%) or interns (40%).81 Organizations can and should use digital media to communicate and engage with employees. Social enterprise tools are well suited for developing community within a company. Yet only 56% of employers use digital media to communicate with employees on topics such as organizational culture, team building or innovation, a Willis Towers Watson study found.77 Managers, still one of the most important drivers of sustainable employee engagement, should be enabled to use social business and collaboration tools to intensify employee productivity and engagement. 41% of companies have contingent employees This represents real change for employers as well as workers, permitting work and talent to flow in and out of organizations, boosting agility, productivity and competitiveness. As more work moves outside the traditional employment relationship, organizations inevitably will need to become more flexible, collaborative, interlinked and permeable to allow tasks to be accomplished by the most capable talent – whether this be a full- or part-time employee, a freelancer or an employee of an outsourcer. Digital Media and Society 29 Work has gone from being largely aggregated into jobs to increasingly being dispersed outside the organization. Talent is moving in and out of organizations much more freely. Ravin Jesuthasan, Willis Towers Watson Figure 12: Potential of Talent Platforms for Global GDP Growth Source: Connecting Talent with Opportunity in the Digital Age, McKinsey & Company, June 201583 Such a shift has implications for the broader society. A recent analysis by McKinsey & Company suggests that talent platforms like those mentioned above could boost global gross domestic product (GDP) by $2.7 trillion by 2025 (Figure 12). The highest share of the gain would come from greater labour-force participation of currently inactive people and more hours for part-timers. The rest of the gain would result from higher employment due to more and faster job matches and higher productivity as a result of better matches, all achieved through online talent platforms.82 4. Digital media can facilitate education and life-long learning to build and source the skills of the future The World Economic Forum's New Vision for Education project identifies critical skills for the 21st century, and explores ways to address any gaps through digital platforms.84 30 Digital Media and Society The labour market increasingly demands higher-order skills, i.e. non-routine analytical and interpersonal skills. Literacy in information and communications technology, and competencies such as creative problem-solving and collaboration are among the most important. In addition, character qualities such as adaptability, and social and cultural awareness need to be developed. Building digital skills from an early age provides opportunities to successfully navigate life, improve employability and participate in society – which can help make the world a better, more equal place. Increased use of digital media is helping this process. Downsides and Risks 1. Digital media can be used by communities with harmful intentions to spread propaganda and to mobilize followers Digital media offers opportunities to spread information and organize action for good causes, but can also be used to disseminate maleficent content and propaganda, and be used, for example, by extremist groups to recruit and mobilize followers. Young adults and children are vulnerable, especially if they lack a stable social support network. I'm a big believer that we absolutely need technical literacy across all ages. And that starts with our education system. We don't need everybody to become a computer scientist, but we need everybody to understand the computational systems that are shaping their lives. danah boyd, Data & Society Research Institute/Microsoft Research Employees need to be more flexible to adapt to changing requirements and continuously learn and develop new skills. Global Talent 2021, a study by Oxford Economics in collaboration with Willis Towers Watson, among others, identified digital skills, agile thinking skills, interpersonal and communication skills, and global operating skills as the most important competencies for the future.85 Digital leadership (enabling execution of the digital strategy) based on digital acumen is essential. Managers and leaders need the right knowledge and skills to recognize and anticipate digital trends, understand implications for business and leverage technology to stay abreast. However, only 19% of leaders are viewed as strong in digital leadership and management, a Harvard Business Review study published in 2015 found, so a need exists to develop such skills.86 Digital media and technology can help to close skill gaps by supporting teaching and self-education. Learning resources can be made available to a broader audience at lower cost and higher quality. Digital media can be used to facilitate life-long learning, e.g. through embedding learning technology in widely used platforms or using digital media for communication (e.g. teaching, mentoring and coaching) between students and educators. Digital media also is increasingly used for attracting and sourcing talent, especially young, digitally savvy workers. Diverse crossindustry talent pools might be another way to meet the need for new skills while offering growth opportunities to employees.87 Many platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter constantly update their terms of service and community standards to disapprove or forbid "threats of violence", "violent or gory content", "terrorist activity" or "organized criminal activity".88 Numerous social media training sessions have been held on counter speech and the number of NGOs and community and student groups that promote positive speech against extremism have increased.89 However, strong and consistent global internet governance is yet to be implemented in a common effort by all digital media stakeholders. As citizens use social media for political discussions, questions arise about which statements are appropriate within a framework of global norms and values, and which should be prohibited. Progressive discourse in one context could be considered offensive in another. International standards can provide guidance (e.g., the United Nations' compilation of international standards for freedom of opinion and expression).90 Online freedom of expression has broad global support, shows a World Economic Forum survey in 2014 on values, beliefs and attitudes of internet users worldwide.91 Of the survey's more than 11,000 respondents, 70% said they can express themselves freely online and almost 60% said it is okay for people to state their ideas on the internet, even if extreme. At the same time, however, more than 70% of respondents said they are very careful about what they do or say on the internet; almost 40% think that their government tries to prevent people from accessing some information on the internet. Challenging questions remain: How free is the internet, and how free should it be to safeguard human rights? Where should the line be drawn between free speech and preventing harm, given that communication in global social networks traverses national and cultural borders with different norms and values? What roles does government, industry and civil society play in this context? Digital Media and Society 31 2. By selecting what information reaches which users, digital media can alter human decisions and pose risks to civil society Far more content is available through digital media than any user could possibly sift through. Algorithms deployed by search engines, social media platforms and other industry participants filter this vast amount of information to make it manageable for consumers. People now have more tools to curate content. However, given the growing importance of digital media as a source of information about everything from social issues and politics to job opportunities, there needs to be transparency regarding how content is filtered and which content and advertisements are shown to which users. In some cases, filtering mechanisms have been shown to contain biases that can have a discriminatory effect. For example, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the International Computer Science Institute recently conducted a series of experiments to examine how digital profiles influence the advertisements Google displays on third-party websites. They found that Google's transparency tool, called "ads settings", allows consumers to view and edit the interests Google has inferred about them, but does not always reflect potentially sensitive information being used to target the consumers. "Ads settings" gives information about some user profile features and provide some choice on ads, but these choices could lead to seemingly discriminatory ads. For example, they showed that Google is more likely to recommend high-level executive job postings to male rather than female job-seekers.92,93 The researchers noted that browsing sites aimed at people with substance abuse problems, for example, triggered a rash of advertisements for rehabilitation programmes, but Google's transparency page did not change.94 They concluded that the lack of transparency about how systems like Google use consumer data to influence the information to which consumers are exposed – and potentially the decisions they make – is a major concern from a societal standpoint. In a similar example, a White House report in 2014 on the impact of Big Data on human decisions and outcomes concludes, "Data analytics have the potential to eclipse longstanding civil rights protections in how personal information is used in housing, credit, employment, health, education and the marketplace."95 Sources of news and information in the digital age are another issue. Another Pew survey in 2015, which examines where Americans get their news, found that a majority of Millennials (61%) and half of Generation X-ers (51%) get their political news on Facebook.96 This has become a concern because separate research indicates that the majority of these users do not understand that Facebook selectively screens content.97 32 Digital Media and Society 'I share therefore I am'. So over time, people actually narrow the stream of information that they share on social media. They call it the 'spiral of silence'. Sherry Turkle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As social networking platforms increasingly become online intermediaries content published outside those platforms are at risk of marginalization since some platforms and content can be sponsored while others not. Critics worry that "filter bubbles" make it more likely for individuals to be exposed to content with which they already agree and less likely to be exposed to dissenting points of view. However, argues a 2014 paper by a New York University researcher, because social media creates connections across people who are outside each other's intimate social circles, it actually helps to expose users to more heterogeneous views.98 Researchers from Stanford University observe that individuals are more likely to engage with content that contradicts their own views when it is socially endorsed.99 Indeed, the 20,000 global online news consumers surveyed by Reuters Institute for its Digital News Report 2015 said that search services and social media "help them find more diverse news and lead them to click on brands they do not normally use".100 Of course, consumers of news have always been subject to the judgement of others via curation. In traditional media, editors and others historically have made those decisions, without much transparency or public oversight. Nikki Usher, an assistant professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, argues that algorithms can be useful antidotes to these black-box decisions. Humans build them, after all, and the good ones, according to Usher, continually refine their suggestions to provide consumers with new content beyond their main interests.101 Other concerns pertain to digital media's impact on civic participation and inclusion. Digital media enables speedy coordination of action, but social mass movements are complex and it is difficult to create sustainable structures for action.102 A risk also exists that somewhat loose and transitory virtual communities replace more robust and enduring physical ones, and that "clicktivism" might not have as much impact as real-world action. Moreover, with information and discussion moving online, the views and needs of those without access to digital media are less represented. 3. The transformation of work brought about by digital media may increase inequality and lower productivity Despite the productivity gains and opportunities of digital media to actually bridge economic gaps and reduce inequality, potential downsides still exist to the newly emerging work paradigm. As digital media transforms work by increasing fragmentation, and demand for various skill-sets rises and falls, the likelihood is very real of rising inequality in the near term as the global economy adjusts to these new realities.103 First, digital media and related technology may drive nearterm inequality as innovations like talent platforms increase the productivity and rewards of highly skilled workers while simultaneously cutting the cost of low-skilled work. Talent could turn increasingly to platforms like Topcoder to access opportunities that offer compensation and development potential that are much greater than those offered through traditional employment. At the same time, companies might turn to platforms like Taskrabbit to access workers to perform discrete activities at the lowest possible cost. Highly skilled workers benefit from these more flexible work structures, but lower-skilled employees could be hurt in the short-term. Case study: Uber Uber's car-sharing service is an example of how digital platforms can transform who does the work and how, creating both winners and losers. The creation of apps that allow more efficient connection between drivers and passengers has made it easier and cheaper for consumers to get rides where and when they need. But the new apps have also disrupted the market for skilled cab drivers. Digital tools like mapping apps put knowledge into the hands of novice drivers that previously had to be accumulated through years of experience. The ability of lower-skilled entrants to compete with highly skilled and experienced drivers effectively transfers that knowledge premium from one group of workers to the other. Second, digital media has the potential to diminish work effectiveness and productivity. The multiple platforms and vast quantities of information and content at their fingertips may distract workers and disrupt work. In addition, as more people work remotely, valuable face-to-face time is reduced, which can weaken understanding and collaboration, and potentially hinder innovation. Finally, because digital media facilitates greater information-sharing, it has the potential to compromise intellectual property. It remains to be seen whether the positive effects will outweigh the negative. Considering the wealth of contributing factors, it is likely that different demographics and different social levels will be influenced differently. About two-thirds of respondents in China and Brazil to the Implications of Digital Media Survey stated that using social media enhances their work-effectiveness, but only 11% of those surveyed in the USA believe this (Table 21). In Germany and South Africa, opinions are roughly evenly split on whether social media usage reduces or improves workeffectiveness. 5. Digital media use can change social skills – online does not replace offline For interacting with other people, online is not the same as offline. Face-to-face interaction and communication require – and hone – a finely tuned ability to read and understand others. It promotes a sense of social connection, which is essential to the give-and-take functioning of families, communities and workplaces. Yet a growing number of people spend more time engaged with digital media than in actual conversation. Most teenagers send hundreds of texts a day and 44% never "unplug", even while playing a sport, notes Sherry Turkle, a psychologist and director of the Initiative on Technology and Self programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. With relatively little time available for actual conversation, this generation of young people struggles to listen or make eye contact or read body language.104 Source: Adapted from Lead The Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment, Lead The Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment. Boudreau, Jesuthasan and Creelman. Wiley, 2015 Figure 13: The Pros and Cons of "New Work" Cons Pros – – – – – – – Transportability of skills – On-demand training through multiple channels – Boundary-less careers – Precise work-worker matching – Rewards segmented to match the needs of individual workers – Worker empowerment Risk shifted to workers Employers stop training Death of the career Commoditization of jobs Rush to lowest cost Worker exploitation Source: Adapted from Lead The Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment, Lead The Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment. Boudreau, Jesuthasan and Creelman. Wiley, 2015 Digital Media and Society 33 Of concern is whether the recent trend of taking "selfies" and posting status updates about one's life nurtures narcissism. Studies have produced mixed findings. One study associates higher narcissism with students' motives for using Twitter; more narcissistic students are likely to say they posted updates to attract followers and gain admiration on the site.105 One possible impact of excessive digital media consumption is changing levels of empathy in society – perhaps a result of the fewer hours that such consumption leaves for faceto-face communication. A 2010 study by researcher Sara Konrath found a 40% decline in empathy among college students over the past 30 years, with most of the decline occurring after 2000. The study specifically looked at four different types of empathy and found that the biggest drops are in empathic concern or concern for the misfortunes of others, and in perspective taking, which requires an ability to imagine other people's points of view.106 Support for this finding comes from a range of experiments that explore commonplace everyday situations for college students – for example, sitting together over a meal but having their phones out. In such a situation, research shows that not only does the conversation become about topics that are less personal and more generic, but the level of empathic connection among the participants also declines. Interestingly, this finding is at odds with results of the Implications of Digital Media Survey, in which only 7% of respondents feel that digital media has had a negative impact on their empathy levels (here defined as "understanding another's situation or feelings, and experiencing a sense of their emotional state"), while 54% think it actually has had a positive impact (Table 22). The discrepancy in findings might reflect the difference between asking people about their empathic capacity and studying their measured performance on tests. But the discrepancy might also indicate that the definition of empathy is actually being transformed, and the capacity that respondents labelled "empathy" is distinct from either empathic concern or perspective taking. Indeed, a recent study from California State University shows a difference between real-world and virtual empathy, although they correlate.107 Whether empathy is negatively affected depends on what is being done online, for example, when (non-verbal) communication is lacking, as in video gaming. But online activities can also improve time spent in face-to-face communication. However, the study did find that real-world empathy has a stronger relationship with social support. In other words, "a hug feels six times more supportive than an emoji", as The Wall Street Journal put it in an article on the topic.108 Regarding the impact of digital media on our most important social connections, 61% of respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey view digital media as helpful to maintaining already existing relationships with friends, and 45% believe it is helpful in forming new ones (Table 22). 34 Digital Media and Society 5. Digital media consumption may facilitate bullying, harassment and social defamation Linked to the question of empathy is that of hurtful behaviours online. Digital media has reduced the potential costs, and increased the ease of engaging in behaviours that harm either others or ourselves Hate speech, "internet trolling" and cyberbullying are serious issues. In a global YouGov survey sponsored by Vodafone, of more than 4,700 teenagers worldwide, one-half of the respondents stated that cyberbullying was worse than face-to-face bullying and 43% thought cyberbullying is now a worse problem among teenagers than drug abuse. About one-fifth of the total sample reported having been cyberbullied. Of those, 41% stated cyberbullying made them feel depressed and 18% said it had made them consider suicide. The survey also found that 40% of students who were bullied online did not tell their parents because of feelings of shame or fear.109 Recent research by the Net Children Go Mobile project found that cyberbullying is now more common than bullying in person – 12% have been bullied online versus 10% offline, according to a survey in 2013-2014 of children aged 9-16 years drawn from seven European countries.110 Of the surveyed children, 17% said they had been bothered or upset by something on the internet. Beyond cyberbullying, online risks include seeing negative content or receiving negative messages, such as hate messages, sexual content and self-harm sites. However, it should be noted that digital media is not the "root" of cyberbullying, but more of an "instrument". Cyberbullying is mostly related to real-world issues and personal emotional or psychological problems. Often, offline and online bullying are connected. Used in a beneficial way, digital media can enable people to express rejection of malicious behaviour and victims can find support online, e.g., with organisations like the International Bullying Prevention Association, and the European Network Against Bullying in Learning and Leisure Environments. 6. Excessive digital media consumption may increase vulnerability to addiction and harm mental and physical health Excessive digital media consumption poses a number of risks to user health and well-being. While a higher percentage of respondents in the Implications of Digital Media Survey feel that digital media is positively, rather than negatively, affecting various aspects of their lives, they are the least positive about impacts on their physical health, stress and attention span. (Figure 14, Table 22) Before describing all potentially negative effects on mental and physical health, it should be noted that their occurrence is largely dependent on the way digital media is being used. The internet can be an asset for individuals and healthcare practitioners, as many content services have been provided to prevent or cure health problems (for example, the UK Mental Health Foundation or the US National Institute for Health).111 112 What effec has digital media had on your personal life? Figure 14: Effects of Digital Media Usage Worse Better 12% Length of attention span 45% 9% Short-term memory 46% 11% Long-term memory 45% 8% Motor skills 49% 10% Oral communication skills 44% 8% Written communication skills 54% 6% Critical thinking and problem solving 56% 13% Stress 37% 15% Physical health 39% 8% Mental health 49% Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Stress has been identified as one potential health risk stemming from excessive digital media consumption. Researchers at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland studied "technostress", which results from having more content than can be attended to without anxiety.113 They found three major phenomena most directly associated with stress: –– Overload – increased work because of the volume and variety of social media contact –– Invasion – intrusion of work into personal life, caused by personal media connections –– Uncertainty – continuous and unpredictable change in social media applications and requirements The pressures associated with managing the sheer volume of electronic stimuli are important enough, but they are compounded by the leakage of digital media-borne content across the boundary that once separated a user's work and personal lives. Many can no longer easily differentiate between business and personal, between time on and time off. New innovations in digital media often add to the stress from overload and invasion, as individuals struggle to master new modes and norms of connection. Even the network-building advantages of social media can have associated risks. Being constantly updated on friends' latest professional successes, fantastic vacations and personal triumphs may cause envy-related stress. Users may also feel pressure to carefully curate the presentation of their own lives to highlight the great birthday party but hide the impending divorce. Ubiquitous connectivity also brings other sources of tension, including a decline in civility. Chrissy Teigen, a model, recently lashed out at online critics who posted nasty comments about her weight in response to a photo she had uploaded to Instagram: "In what other real-life situation would you walk up to someone and tell them they're fat or gained weight?". Electronically mediated interactions are more anonymous and often more bluntly negative than faceto-face encounters. Another health risk from increased digital media consumption is its potential for addictive behaviour. In 2013, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) added "internet use disorder" to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders as a condition warranting more clinical research and experience. The APA took this step in response to growing evidence that some video gamers experience symptoms similar to those felt by people with substance abuse or gambling addiction – and may be experiencing similar changes in brain chemistry related to the release of dopamine.114 The governments of China and South Korea have already deemed internet addiction a public health threat and have taken steps to combat it, including opening up treatment centres and preventing children from accessing gaming websites during certain hours.115 Research by Hyoungkoo Khang and colleagues at the University of Alabama found that the likelihood of addiction is closely related to the user's motivation for using digital media. Their study, published in 2013, found that those who used digital media to kill time and have fun, or as tools to make a good impression on others, are more likely to develop addictions to the media used.116 The researchers noted that because of the impact of digital media on social norms "in which an individual's social activities appear to rely primarily upon his/her knowledge and capacity to use information, communication and entertainment technology", it has become increasingly difficult for individuals to avoid spending considerable amounts of time using digital media.117 "Although individuals in society are aware of the detrimental effects of excessive reliance on digital media, a dilemma exists because one might suffer from social exclusion if she/he refuses to partake in the new social norms associated with new media devices" they concluded.118 Digital Media and Society 35 Digital media also appears to have some association with depression, although causality is unclear. One large longitudinal study of Americans aged 14-24 years found that heavy use of the internet and video games is associated with an increase in depression. But the study from the University of Pennsylvania concluded that intensive digital media use might be a symptom of depression rather than its cause.119 The researchers found that moderate internet use, especially for acquiring information, is most strongly associated with healthy development. Two other studies that examine the relationship between social networking and depression in youth also found that the quality of social networking interactions, but not the quantity of use, is associated with depression.120 Increased digital media use also has an impact on cognition. It has been shown to lower recall rates for information people believe they can access easily online, although it also effectively extends human cognition through external resources.121 A study conducted by the Statistic Brain Research Institute in 2015 found that the average human attention span has decreased by 31% since 2000, from 12 seconds to 8.25.122 A study published in 2004 found that early television exposure is associated with attention problems at age seven.123 However, it is unclear whether this is due specifically to increased use of digital media. The use of digital media has implications for physical health as well. According to Vaughan Bell and others, as well as Kathlyn Mills, from University College London, no evidence currently exists from neuroscience studies to indicate that typical internet use harms the adolescent brain. 124 125 126 Of concern, however, is that time spent on digital technology displaces time that could be spent on physical activity. As Bell notes, "Low levels of physical activity associated with the passive use of digital technology have been linked to obesity and diabetes".127 Finally, increased digital media use is cutting into user downtime, which is critical to allow the brain to synthesize information, make connections between ideas and develop a sense of self. When downtime and solitude are possible, 36 Digital Media and Society many digital media users turn to their devices rather than risk boredom, cutting off an opportunity for restorative and creative thought.128 Children, especially, lose out cognitively and emotionally, if they are always given a screen to stimulate them. A capacity for boredom and solitude is a signal development of childhood, and central to a later capacity for relationship, as Sherry Turkle attests.129 7. Benefits of digital media for young children are limited, when used extensively and without guidelines So far, baby bouncers and potty training devices with tablet holders still face protest by concerned parents.130 But children are being exposed to digital media at younger and younger ages. A 2015 study by a research firm, Childwise, found that 73% of British children under the age of five are using a tablet or computer compared with just 23% in 2012. By the time they are six years old, more than 40% are using a device every day.131 This can be problematic because children are the most vulnerable to the negative impacts of digital media overuse. First, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, numerous studies have indicated that excessive new media use can lead to attention problems, school difficulties, sleep and eating disorders and obesity.132 For example, a 2011 study by Michelle Garrison and colleagues found that violent content and evening media use were associated with increased sleep problems for children aged three to five years.133 Second, it is harmful to children if interaction with parents and others is replaced by interaction with digital media. Research has shown that brain development depends on social interaction with others during a critical period in early life. Going without that early social interaction has irreversible effects that create social and cognitive impairments throughout life.134 In addition, healthy neurological development requires the engagement of all sensory systems, but heavy digital media consumption favours the visual and auditory systems over the vestibular, proprioceptive, tactile and attachment systems, creating possibly permanent imbalances.135 Third, the overuse of digital media can delay language development. Research has shown that very young children (aged 9-18 months) do not learn language by watching educational videos without active interaction with another person.136 137 Interpersonal interaction seems to be a fundamental component of language development. Interestingly, while a 2013 study similarly found that canned content delivered through digital devices was ineffective in teaching language to young children (aged 24-30 months), it also found that live interactions between a child and an adult conducted over a digital device such as a tablet or smartphone did enable the child to learn new words.138 Fourth, uncontrolled time spent on digital media often displaces time spent on academics, lowering academic achievement. Studies show that most teenagers multitask between entertainment and academic work, both inside and outside the classroom. A 2010 survey published by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that almost one-third of the 8-18 years age group surveyed reported watching TV, texting, listening to music or using some other medium "most of the time" that they do homework.139 Such multitasking has been found to diminish students' understanding and memory of content and to make it harder for them to transfer their learning to new contexts.140 Social Media's impact on individuals, organizations and society Social media platforms – ranging from WeChat to Twitter – offer both opportunities and challenges in the ways people communicate and interact in various types of relationships. The Impact of Digital Content: Opportunities and Risks of Creating and Sharing Information Online, a white paper by the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Social Media, examines how social media is transforming the way that humans build communities, act collectively and individually, and transform social networks into integral communication institutions.141 The report explores the use and transformation of social media by building a discussion around the current impact of different platforms, the "business" of social media, and the ethical and legal implications for stakeholders when sharing and using information online. The paper ends with a review of future trajectories for social media tools and networks, and how they have the potential to influence individuals, organizations and society. Finally, while digital media offers children access to a huge wealth of information, not all information can be trusted. Digital media makes it easier to disseminate inaccurate as well as accurate information, and much that is online is potentially harmful to younger demographics. This study's research confirms a sense of unease about children's growing exposure to, and consumption of, digital media. Among respondents to the Implications of Digital Media Survey, 71% believe that digital media can create problems for youth (Table 23). Interestingly, respondents are more concerned about the negative impacts of digital media on the 4-15 years age group – particularly the 8-11 years group – than on the under-4 years group. To the extent that this reflects respondents' beliefs that children aged below four years do not have access to digital media, their concern about children's exposure to digital media could be lower than warranted. Digital Media and Society 37 Section 4 Outlook and Call to Action Multistakeholder dialogue identifies need for future action Since the inception of the Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society project at the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in 2015, the MEI industry team has brought together experts from the private and public sectors in a series of sessions to explore the ways in which digital media has disrupted online consumer patterns and is affecting human behaviour and society. The sessions helped to highlight the intended and unintended consequences of increased digital media use. They also helped to identify several actions for stakeholders to mitigate the negative, and further exploit the positive, impacts of digital media use: "The Analogue Hearts and Digital Minds: The Impact of Digital Media on Human Behaviour" project workshop at the World Economic Forum on East Asia in April 2015 focused on identifying the consumption patterns of the contemporary Asian digital media consumer and the social implications of excessive digital media use, including change of behaviour, habits and human psychology. Early education of children by parents was identified as a main driver of responsible digital media use. Participants also discussed the many benefits of greater connectivity across the region, including better access to information, economic opportunity and financial inclusion. World Economic Forum on East Asia, Jakarta, Indonesia April 2015 To better analyse the implications of increasing digital media use, the MEI industry Strategy Officers met with special guests as well as the Global Agenda Councils on the Future of Media, Entertainment & Information and on Social Media, in a project workshop during the MEI Industry Spring Strategy Meeting in May 2015. They explored the drivers behind and impact of changing media consumption habits. Among the main points of discussion were: a growing need for engaging digital content to enable participation from users, the link between higher digital connection and lower empathy levels, and the potential loss of human connection in spending excessive time online. 01: Participants in the project workshop at the World Economic Forum on East Asia in April 2015 01 38 Technology is needed that not only serves individual users but also addresses the rise of societal issues such as social isolation, cyberbullying, addiction and other recent developments. Digital Media and Society 02 Regarding the human implications of increased use of digital media and increased personalization, the challenge for both industry and the public sector will be to make sure that such trends do not ultimately disrupt healthy societal dynamics. MEI Industry Spring Strategy Meeting, New York, USA May 2015 01 At the session on China's New Media Society at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, in September 2015, the need for multistakeholder collaboration on issues such as data privacy was deemed imperative to ensure the safety of the digital media consumer. Discussions also focused on the promise of digital media for cross-cultural communication, cultural diversity and transparency. 03 At the Digital Changes in Society session during the Forum's Young Global Leaders' Summit in August 2015, participants discussed how the changing digital technology landscape is having an impact on the workplace, as well as other aspects of society. Participants discussed the opportunities provided by digital technology and platforms to better match labour supply and demand and increase productivity, as well as the opportunities for individuals to increase work flexibility and work-life balance. Improving work-life balance is the No 1 reason for people to work remotely. While only 20% of work in the USA is done remotely today, this number could be increased to 50%. Young Global Leaders' Summit, Geneva, Switzerland August 2015 01: Panellists in the project workshop at the MEI Industry Spring Strategy Meeting in May 2015 02: Participants in the project workshop at the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders' Summit, August 2015 03: Panellists during the project workshop at the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China September 2015 The explosion of content, its accessibility and the multifaceted views that the internet exposes individuals to, has made the typical content consumer cautious about the source of information, the validity of the information and the authoritative power of the source. This reality has put a strain on trust in the content ecosystem. Annual Meeting of the New Champions, Dalian, China September 2015 Digital Media and Society 39 The public sector Children need mentors to navigate through digital media use and to use digital media for developing the right skills. Annual Meeting of the New Champions, Dalian, China September 2015 Through this ongoing dialogue between the MEI industry partners and engaged stakeholders such as NGOs, academia and civil society, ideas have been collected to address some concerns and to promote the benefits of increased digital media use. In addition, this dialogue has pointed the way towards future research and discussion needed to create maximum value for the MEI industry, digital media users, and society overall. The power of multistakeholder collaboration – a call to action The research presented suggests that action from all sectors of society can help to ensure that humans make the most of increasing use of digital media while mitigating the related risks: Multistakeholder collaboration The public and private sectors should partner together to drive action on the impacts of digital media hyperconnectivity noted in this report. The Forum can facilitate this public-private collaboration. Both regulators and industry can engage with academia and NGOs to incorporate research findings and initiatives in designing and creating new socially responsible MEI industry offerings and updating current public policies. Multistakeholder collaboration will be critical to moving forward in several key areas: –– Creating and building on standards that improve and redefine the digital user experience. –– Building on existing standards and regulations for personal data privacy and security by supporting initiatives that help companies, the public sector and consumers to better understand how data can be collected and used to create social, economic and personal outcomes in ways that protect privacy, e.g., Facebook's Data Drive Economy Roundtable series.142 –– Establishing and reinforcing governance on making digital media an instrument for freedom of speech and expression, while simultaneously preventing hateful, harmful speech or propaganda. –– Establishing and reinforcing governance around content to prevent cybercrime and safeguard citizens, especially minors. –– Educating children about digital citizenship, including internet safety and ethical codes of conduct for using digital media and technology. –– Recognizing the implications of work fragmentation for social safety nets, and creating more flexible regulatory frameworks that accommodate a diversity of company-worker relationships. –– Providing equal and facilitated access to digital media for all citizens. 40 Digital Media and Society Public institutions can help to update standards and regulations, as well as promote and enforce them, based on scientific evidence in order to enable the beneficial use of digital media and prevent the negative effects. This should be done maintaining a flexible and innovation-friendly framework. The public sector can also facilitate the creation of more social institutions and programmes, such as education and awareness campaigns, designed to support both citizens and the private sector to address or foster the influences mentioned in this report. The European Commission's DG Connect group has a directorate dedicated to digital society, trust and security, for example. Governmental bodies should set up similar resources for their countries or regions. However, any model of guidance and support should be flexible, and be able to develop quickly in step with changes in the marketplace and user behaviour. The private sector/MEI industry The private sector, principally industry, should consider the implications on individuals when designing platforms and services or creating content. Industry best practices and self-regulation are the optimal way to create innovative solutions in a fast-evolving environment. Examples of possible actions: restricting minors' access to harmful content, enabling free expression and participation, accepting feedback and starting discourse with users. In addition, the private sector can step up efforts to build trust with consumers by, among other ways, being more transparent about how personal data are used and showing a corporate ethos of accountability and social responsibility. One effective measure is to sponsor public and nonprofit organizations that help to promote beneficial use of digital media. The CEO Coalition is an example of an initiative where private action is facilitated by a public body.143 Company signatories to the Coalition, a cooperative voluntary intervention designed to respond to challenges of young Europeans going online, has committed to actions, including age-appropriate privacy settings, wider use of content classification and better availability and use of parental controls. Industry could also support NGOs and social enterprises, such as iZ HERO Lab, a social enterprise based in South Korea and Singapore, dedicated to educating children and parents on responsible digital media usage. From an employer's perspective, organizations should develop strategies to integrate digital media into workflows and should act proactively on the opportunities and pitfalls their businesses and employees encounter because of increased connectivity. The forward-thinking employer Digital media now touches almost every aspect of a typical organization, from how talent is sourced and deployed, to how, where and when work gets done, and how the business connects with employees and customers. Given these fundamental changes, employers are recommended to: –– Use digital media (including talent platforms) to more accurately and flexibly match an individual's skills to a specific business need, rather than think solely in terms of traditional jobs. This will create a more flexible, collaborative and productive environment for better business results. –– Take a more nuanced approach to how work should be conducted. Recognize when collaboration and personal interaction are needed, versus when it may be optimal for work to be performed independently and remotely. –– Use social media tools to build communication and engagement within the organization. –– Source and build digital skills and develop digital leadership. –– Encourage employees not only to turn on, but also to turn off. Employers that expect employees to be accessible through digital media 24/7 run the risk of decreased productivity and burnout. Individuals and civil society –– Finally, individuals are encouraged to build digital literacy and skills and to use digital media responsibly. That means making use of digital media's many benefits and avoiding the harmful aspects – protecting both oneself and others, especially those unable to protect themselves. –– In addition, individuals can get involved with civic organizations and NGOs to help make a difference on digital media issues. Thousands of NGOs and associations promote the helpful use of digital media and the prevention of its negative effects. Their objectives range from developing digital skills and caring for people who have had negative online experiences, to enabling flexible work arrangements and supporting civic participation and community building. The responsible individual and parent Much can, and should, be done collaboratively across stakeholders to increase the positive impacts of digital media use. It is also imperative that individuals use digital media responsibly. Based on this report's research, individuals are recommended to: –– Protect their digital identities by being careful about what they share online and by being aware of the terms and conditions of platforms and applications. –– Ensure sufficient time offline for human connection, healthy physical activity and the necessary "downtime", in order to prevent information overload and stress. –– Prepare for the coming "gig economy", taking greater care in managing professional lives, reputations and professional development. –– Make use of the abundant opportunities to learn and develop, maintain beneficial relationships, make life entertaining and meaningful, care for others, and contribute to societal welfare. Because digital media use poses special risks to children, parents must not only educate their children but also manage their digital media use. Research findings suggest the following guidelines for parents: –– Monitor children's digital media engagement and ensure they get: adequate physical activity, lots of face-to-face communication, uninterrupted time for academic work, downtime for free thinking, and even some alone time for self-reflection. This is crucial for cognitive, emotional and social development. –– Install content filters, parental controls and usage restriction software on devices used by children in order to mitigate overuse and protect them from harmful online content. Avoid digital media in children's sleep environments. –– Consider fewer top-down restrictions on use (which children will evade) and focus more on education, guidance and communication about managing online risks and building digital literacy. Digital Media and Society 41 Project Contributors World Economic Forum Project Team Claudio Cocorocchia, Project Lead, Content lead for the Media, Entertainment & Information Industries, Switzerland Diana El-Azar, Project Sponsor, Member of the Executive Committee,Switzerland Anne-Marie Jentsch, Project Manager, Media, Entertainment & Information Industries (on secondment from Willis Towers Watson), Switzerland Mengyu Annie Luo, Project Sponsor, Head of Media, Entertainment & Information Industries, USA Anna Sophia O'Neil, Project Coordinator, Media, Entertainment & Information Industries, USA Lena Woodward, Project Associate, Media, Entertainment & Information Industries, Switzerland Project Advisers Tom Davenport, Senior Consultant, Research and Innovation Center, Willis Towers Watson, USA Anne Huisman, Senior Consultant, Executive Compensation, Willis Towers Watson, Netherlands Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Willis Towers Watson, USA Amy Johnson, Research Analyst, Research and Innovation Center, Willis Towers Watson, USA Anne Randhava, Analyst, Communication and Change Management, Willis Towers Watson, USA Steering Committee Members Olivier Oullier, Professor of Behavioural and Brain Sciences, Aix Marseille University, France (2011 - 2015) Irene Braam, Vice-President, Government Relations, and Head, Brussels Liaison Office, Bertelsmann, Belgium Anne Hunter, Senior Vice-President, Global Marketing Strategy, comScore, USA Sanjay Nazerali, Global Chief Strategy Officer, Dentsu Aegis Network, United Kingdom Ozge Bulut Marasli, Executive Vice-President, Strategy, Dogan TV Holding, Turkey Kevin King, Global Practice Chair, Edelman Digital, Edelman, USA Sarah Wynn-Williams, Director, Global Public Policy, Facebook, USA Rob Norman, Chief Digital Officer, Global, GroupM, USA Idalia Cruz, Director, Strategy, Media, Grupo Salinas, Mexico Yuhyun Park, Founder, iZ HERO Lab, Singapore Christophe Nicolas, Group Chief Information Officer, Kudelski Group, and Senior Vice-President and Head, Kudelski Security, Switzerland 42 Digital Media and Society Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA Karen Willenberg, Director, Regulatory and Legal Affairs, Electronic Media Network (M-Net), South Africa (2004-2015) Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategist, Publicis Group, USA Steven Schwartz, Global Managing Director, Reuters News Agency, Thomson Reuters, USA (2011-2015) Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Willis Towers Watson, USA Sam Gregory, Programme Director, WITNESS, USA Session Contributors Jakarta, Indonesia 19 April 2015 World Economic Forum on East Asia "Analogue Hearts and Digital Minds: The Impact of Digital Media on Human Behaviour" Rohana Rozhan, Chief Executive Officer, Astro Malaysia Holdings, Malaysia Yobie Benjamin, Co-Founder, Avegant Corporation, USA Dick van Motman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Dentsu Aegis Network South East Asia, Singapore Raymond Siva, Managing Director, Edelman, Malaysia Gloria Ai, Founder and Anchor, iAsk Media, People's Republic of China Seungjoon Chang, Vice-President, Maekyung Media Group, Republic of Korea Hu Yong, Professor of Journalism and Communication, Peking University, People's Republic of China Rajnesh Singh, Regional Director, Asia-Pacific, The Internet Society (ISOC), Singapore Ranjana Singh, Chairwoman, Indonesia and Vietnam, WPP, Indonesia New York, USA 13 May 2015 MEI Industry Spring Strategy Meeting "Exploring the Drivers behind Changing Media Consumption Habits" Sanjay Nazerali, Global Chief Strategy Officer, Dentsu Aegis Network, United Kingdom Bernadette Aulestia, Executive Vice President, Domestic Network Distribution, HBO, USA Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA Chris Altcheck, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Mic, USA Robert Osher, President, Sony Pictures Digital Production Division (2008-2015), Sony Pictures Entertainment, USA Geneva, Switzerland 12 August 2015 Young Global Leaders (YGL) and Alumni Annual Summit "Digital Changes in Society" Brian A. Wong, Vice-President; Special Assistant to the Chairman, Alibaba Group, People's Republic of China Sara Sutton Fell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, FlexJobs, USA Yuhyun Park, Founder, iZ HERO Lab, Singapore Brian Forde, Director, Digital Currency, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Laboratory, USA Sam Gregory, Programme Director, WITNESS, USA Dalian, People's Republic of China 10 September 2015 Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2015 "China's Media Society: Impacts of Changing Media Consumption Patterns in China" Yan Xuan, President, Greater China, Nielsen, People's Republic of China Jeremy Heimans, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Purpose, USA Mark Thompson, President and Chief Executive, The New York Times, USA Dave Duarte, Chief Executive Officer, Treeshake, South Africa Farida Vis, Director, Visual Social Media Lab and Faculty Research Fellow, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom Stephane Kasriel, Chief Executive Officer, Upwork, USA Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Willis Towers Watson, USA Sam Gregory, Programme Director, WITNESS, USA Blog Contributors Li Ruigang, Founding Chairman, China Media Capital (CMC), People's Republic of China Robert Grove, Chief Executive Officer, North Asia, Edelman, Hong Kong SAR Yan Xuan, President, Greater China, Nielsen, People's Republic of China Yuen-Ying Chan, Director and Professor, Journalism and Media Studies Centre, University of Hong King, Hong Kong SAR Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Willis Towers Watson, USA Dries Buytaert, Founder and Project Lead, Drupal, USA; CoFounder and Chief Technology Officer, Acquia, USA) Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategist, Publicis Group, USA Tom Davenport, Senior Consultant, Research and Innovation Center, Willis Towers Watson, USA Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director and Global Practice Leader, Willis Towers Watson, USA George Zarkadakis, Digital Lead, Communications and Change Management Practice, Willis Towers Watson, United Kingdom Sam Gregory, Programme Director, WITNESS, USA Interviewees BPS Research Digest Series Christian Jarrett, Editor, Research Digest, The British Psychological Society, United Kingdom Olivier Oullier, Professor of Behavioural and Brain Sciences, Aix Marseille University, France (2011-2015) Shahrzad Rafati, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, BroadbandTV Corp, Canada danah boyd, Founder, Data & Society Research Institute and Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, USA Sanjay Nazerali, Global Chief Strategy Officer, Dentsu Aegis Network, United Kingdom Robert Grove, Chief Executive Officer, North Asia, Edelman, Hong Kong SAR Sara Sutton Fell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, FlexJobs, USA Ronaldo Lemos, Co-Founder and Executive Director, Institute for Technology & Science, Brazil Yuhyun Park, Founder, iZ HERO Lab, Singapore Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom Jonas Prising, Chief Executive Officer, ManpowerGroup, USA Sherry Turkle, Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA Parenting for a Digital Future Series Zorana Milicevic, Researcher, Writer and Project Manager, Kulturis, Serbia Sonia Livingstone, Professor of Social Psychology, Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom Emrys Shoemaker, PhD Candidate, Department of International Development, London School of Economics, United Kingdom Michael Dezuanni, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Children and Youth Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Anna Whateley, Lecturer, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Andreas Hepp, Professor of Media and Communication Studies, University of Bremen, Germany Anthea Edalere-Henderson, Faculty Member, Caribbean Institute of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), University of the West Indies, Jamaica Digital Media and Society 43 Tables Table 1: Overview of Respondents (% of Respondents) South Africa (n=997) Germany (n=1023) USA (n=998) Brazil (n=1033) China (n=1019) Total (n=5070) Male 50 61 29 64 55 52 Female 50 39 71 36 45 48 age=15-17 2 3 0 0 0 1 age=18-24 16 16 6 13 11 12 age=25-34 22 22 33 29 28 27 age=35-44 20 21 18 25 24 21 age=45-50 11 10 13 6 7 9 age=51-54 9 10 6 13 11 10 age=55-64 16 15 16 14 19 16 age=65+ 5 4 8 2 1 4 Millennials (age=15-34) 40 40 39 42 39 40 Gen X (age=35-50) 31 30 31 30 30 31 Baby Boomers (age=51-69) 29 29 30 28 30 29 Employed full-time 51 53 43 61 88 59 Employed part-time 10 14 12 11 2 10 Self-employed 16 6 8 13 2 9 Not currently employed & looking for work 9 8 9 6 2 7 Not currently employed & not looking for work 8 8 15 3 1 7 Retired 6 10 13 6 4 8 Full-time student 11 18 9 9 6 10 Part-time student 17 6 3 25 8 12 Gender Age Generation Current employment status Current student status 44 Digital Media and Society South Africa (n=997) Germany (n=1023) USA (n=998) Brazil (n=1033) China (n=1019) Total (n=5070) Not currently a student, but planning to return to school 20 10 13 44 22 22 Not currently a student, not planning to return to school 52 67 75 23 64 56 Single, never married 32 39 34 26 16 29 Married or domestic partnership 55 49 52 66 83 61 Separated or divorced 10 10 11 7 1 8 Widowed 2 2 3 2 0 2 Marital status Number of people in household 1 8 26 22 5 3 13 2 23 33 33 17 11 23 3 21 22 18 34 62 31 4 26 14 15 28 12 19 5 or more 21 5 12 16 12 13 Number of people aged under 18 in household None 46 55 52 33 34 44 1 24 26 21 39 60 34 2 21 15 16 22 5 16 3 6 3 7 5 0 4 4 or more 2 1 4 1 0 2 Highest level of education completed Did not complete high school 4 5 2 3 1 3 Completed high school 27 39 17 20 6 22 Some college/technical school or university 21 12 24 3 5 13 Completed college/technical school 20 22 16 12 9 16 Completed university/ undergraduate degree 15 9 24 11 69 26 Completed graduate school/ graduate degree 12 8 16 50 9 19 Prefer not to answer 2 6 1 1 1 2 Digital Media and Society 45 South Africa (n=998) Germany (n=1023) USA (n=998) Brazil (n=1033) China (n=1019) Total (n=5070) Less than $25,000 13 24 23 4 4 13 $25,000 to $39,999 9 31 19 8 4 14 $40,000 to $59,999 17 13 16 11 11 14 $60,000 to $74,999 13 9 10 16 12 12 $75,000 to $99,999 11 5 13 13 20 12 $100,000 to $149,999 7 1 9 17 19 10 $150,000 or more 5 1 5 10 11 6 Don't know 5 4 1 1 1 2 Prefer not to answer 10 13 5 2 2 6 Household Income Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 2a: Digital Media Usage, by Device, Access and Country (% Responding Yes To Using Each Device) % Yes South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total PC/laptop 96 94 93 97 93 94 Television 93 90 91 98 92 93 Smartphone 85 84 76 88 95 87 Radio 82 80 75 87 43 68 Tablet 56 57 55 68 75 65 Question: Which of the following devices do you have access to? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 2b: Digital Media Usage, by Device, User Frequency and Country (% Responding Yes to Using Each Device 14 Hours or More per Week) 14+ hours/week South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total PC/laptop 52 48 50 49 42 47 Television 24 32 47 18 12 24 Smartphone 40 30 23 42 42 37 Radio 15 14 12 8 5 9 Tablet 14 13 12 14 17 15 Question: On average, approximately how many hours per week do you spend using each device? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum 46 Digital Media and Society Table 3: How Respondents Spend Their Time Specifically, by Country (% Claiming to Use Digital Media 3 Hours or More per Day for the Following Reasons) +3 hours/day South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Doing work/job 46 22 18 49 30 32 Entertainment and amusement (music, TV/film, short videos and gaming) 24 24 14 36 19 23 Social interaction: chatting and messaging 30 16 8 37 18 21 Professional development (get job/ advance career) 15 7 6 24 11 12 Searching information for personal interest 23 12 8 33 15 18 Building/maintaining professional relationships 13 6 6 24 11 12 Searching information for professional interest 22 8 6 32 10 15 Personal development (learn/be creative) 20 9 7 27 14 15 Consuming news 9 8 6 24 12 12 Shopping 6 7 7 11 12 9 Question: On average, approximately how much time per day do you spend using digital media for each of the following reasons? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 4: Content Attributes that Encourage Users to Share Online Content, by Country (% Selecting that Attribute as Top 3 Choice) Share content South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total It is entertaining 53 40 38 48 49 46 It contains useful facts 54 38 34 48 40 43 It is inspiring 46 28 29 33 41 36 It comes from a brand in which I believe 33 29 19 41 35 32 It is novel/unexpected 26 29 14 33 45 32 It would be popular with my peer group 28 25 19 33 40 31 It allows me to express my point of view 28 24 27 36 34 30 Other (please specify): 2 2 1 4 1 2 None of the above 10 28 40 9 5 16 Question: Which of the following content attributes would encourage you to share your own content more often? (Please select your top 3 choices in each column.) Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 47 Table 5: Content Attributes that Encourage Users to Create Online Content, by Country (% Selecting that Attribute as Top 3 Choice) Create content South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total It allows me to express my point of view 54 34 31 54 54 47 It contains useful facts 40 33 26 39 41 37 It is entertaining 42 29 25 37 40 35 It is inspiring 43 25 23 39 34 33 It would be popular with my peer group 28 25 17 33 38 30 It is novel/unexpected 26 24 14 39 36 29 It comes from a brand in which I believe 23 20 0 14 0 28 Other (please specify): 2 2 1 4 1 2 None of the above 14 36 50 9 8 21 Question: Which of the following content attributes would encourage you to create your own content more often? (Please select your top 3 choices in each column.) Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 6: Influence Over Respondents' Digital Media Usage, by Country (% Who Selected It as Most Influential Source) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Spouse/partner 13 15 15 22 22 18 Friends 20 23 14 21 14 18 Search engine 20 14 8 13 16 15 Brands 5 3 2 5 16 8 Public opinion 5 6 2 5 11 7 Experts 6 4 2 7 5 5 Other family member 5 5 4 5 5 5 Journalists 1 2 1 3 1 2 Other (please specify) 3 2 2 2 0 2 None of the above 14 22 49 10 5 17 Question: Which of the following has the most influence on the type of digital media you consume? Select the one most influential source. Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum 48 Digital Media and Society Table 7: Willingness to Pay for Various Types of Content, by Country (% Who Claim to Have Paid for the Respective Content in the Last 12 Months) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Premium entertainment content (e.g. Netflix, Spotify or gaming content) 21 28 27 54 37 34 Exclusive content (e.g. HBO Online) 6 7 9 32 35 21 Content that teaches me skills or abilities (e.g. online university courses) 19 8 7 25 33 21 Specialized content or service (e.g. specific to a hobby) 14 13 7 18 30 19 Content that gives me access to work opportunities (e.g. paid job postings) 21 8 5 23 19 16 Curated news or editorial content (e.g. Financial Times) 6 10 4 15 21 13 Other (please specify) 2 1 1 2 0 1 None of the above 53 54 63 25 26 41 Question: In the past 12 months, have you paid for any of the following types of digital media? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 8: Respondents Saying that Privacy and Anonymity Are Important, Neutral or Unimportant, and Percentage Agreeing on Other Aspects of Privacy, by Country (%) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Important 61 76 55 66 79 69 Neutral 22 16 35 24 16 21 Unimportant 17 8 11 10 5 9 Question: How important is anonymity and privacy in your digital media consumption activities? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 9: Social Media Activity Publicly Visible, by Country (%) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total All 25 14 26 34 26 25 More than half, but not all 36 36 27 44 57 43 Some, but less than half 31 38 29 19 17 25 None 8 13 18 3 1 7 Question: What percentage of your social media activity would you consider publicly visible (i.e. not restricted to a closed group of individuals, such as friends)? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 49 Table 10: Opinions about Privacy and "Right to be Forgotten", by Country (%) % Agree South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total The "right to be forgotten", which means I may cancel or delete any part of my digital presence, is important to me 77 66 62 73 73 71 Having complete control over what personal data of mine are stored and used by brands, products and services, is important to me 79 69 64 84 77 75 I would be willing to pay money for complete control over how my personal data are used by product and service providers who collect user data in exchange for free offerings (e.g. Gmail) 39 24 27 55 64 46 Question: How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about your digital presence? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 11a: Likelihood of Clicking on Advertising while Actively Looking for a Similar Product, by Country (%) % Likely South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Footer banners on video content that you are viewing 35 20 18 56 58 41 Pre-rolls (short video advertisements) to video content that you are viewing 40 27 18 58 63 45 Banner advertisements on web or mobile pages 42 31 19 59 58 45 Advertisements embedded in your social media news feeds 48 25 20 58 61 46 Advertisements on search engine results pages 56 37 26 68 63 52 Promotional text links embedded within sponsored stories 43 23 19 56 54 42 Question: If you were actively looking for a similar product/service, how likely would you be to click on each of these types of online advertisements? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum 50 Digital Media and Society Table 11b: Likelihood of Clicking on Advertising while Not Actively Looking for a Similar Product, by Country (%) % Likely South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Footer banners on video content that you are viewing 18 14 14 41 53 32 Pre-rolls (short video advertisements) to video content that you are viewing 23 18 14 44 59 36 Banner advertisements on web or mobile pages 22 18 14 42 53 34 Advertisements embedded in your social media news feeds 29 15 15 47 56 37 Advertisements on search engine results pages 31 22 17 51 59 40 Promotional text links embedded within sponsored stories 24 14 13 44 52 33 Question: If you were not actively looking for a similar product/service, how likely would you be to click on each of these types of online advertisements? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 12: Respondents Saying They Express Opinions Publicly and within Peer Group, by Country (%) % Yes South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total I am likely to publicly express my interest in, or support for, a brand via social media 57 33 42 70 77 60 I am likely to express my interest in, or support for, a brand via social media within my peer group 64 41 45 75 79 65 Question: How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about social media sites? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 13: Respondents Who Have Set Up Ad-Blocking Tools, by Country (%) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Third-party advertising blocker tools (e.g. for web browser) 31 41 19 31 43 35 Privacy control tools that block thirdparty trackers and cookies 39 37 20 42 32 34 Advertisement blocking settings for social media accounts 23 25 13 20 28 23 None of the above 47 37 69 43 39 46 Question: Have you installed or set up any of the following tools on your device(s)? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 51 Table 14: Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts Deemed Most Important for Media and Entertainment Brands to Support, by Country (%) % Important South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Corporate transparency (e.g. educate customers on how their personal data are stored and used, providing them full control to decide) 73 59 54 85 79 72 Environmental sustainability (e.g. use of sustainable energy) 74 58 50 84 81 72 Ethical labour practices (e.g. gender parity and equal pay) 66 56 54 80 80 69 Social impact accountability (e.g. establish anti-addictive support group for own products and services) 63 50 41 80 80 66 Philanthropy (e.g. financial or inkind support of charities) 60 32 45 77 69 59 Question: Which of the following corporate social responsibility efforts would you say are most important for media and entertainment brands and companies to actively support? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 15: Opinions on How Digital Media Has Influenced Quality of life and Desires to Reduce Digital Media Usage, by Country (%) % Agree South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total My digital media use in the last 12 months has generally improved my overall quality of life 48 30 27 61 66 50 My digital media use in the last 12 months has generally improved the overall quality of my social life 46 24 27 63 68 50 My digital media use in the last 12 months has generally improved the quality of my professional life 53 24 23 67 66 50 Digital media has transformed how I work 61 36 30 66 71 56 I believe I should reduce my use of digital media for entertainment and social networking 28 23 26 35 44 33 I believe I should reduce my use of digital media for information-gathering 19 19 21 33 41 29 Question: How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements about digital media? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum 52 Digital Media and Society Table 16: Reported Influence of Digital Media on Civic Participation, by Country (%) % Better South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Amount of civic participation 39 29 23 62 70 49 Quality of civic participation 40 29 23 64 65 48 Amount of community involvement 48 29 27 69 63 50 Quality of community involvement 50 32 26 69 62 50 Feeling of personal empowerment 57 20 28 67 62 49 % Worse South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of Total Amount of civic participation 4 14 4 5 4 6 Quality of civic participation 5 15 4 6 5 7 Amount of community involvement 6 14 5 5 5 7 Quality of community involvement 5 14 5 5 5 7 Feeling of personal empowerment 4 14 5 4 6 6 Question: In each category, please select the choice that best reflects the effect digital media use has had on your public life? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 17: How Social Media Sites Have Influenced Civic Participation Action Taken (%) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Yes 22 25 12 47 36 30 No 69 61 77 42 54 59 Not sure/Don't know 9 14 11 11 10 11 Question: In the last 12 months, has there been a time when you decided to TAKE ACTION (e.g. start a petition or create content) involving a political or social issue because of something you read on a social networking site? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 53 Table 18: Respondents Using Social Networking Sites for Social or Political Action a Few Times per Week, by Country (%) % A few times per week South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Post links to political stories or articles for others to read 13 10 8 28 21 17 Post your own thoughts or comments on political or social issues 15 12 10 29 20 18 Encourage others to take action on a political or social issue that is important to you 11 9 8 28 21 17 Re-post content related to political or social issues that was originally posted by someone else 14 11 9 31 24 19 "Like" or promote material related to political or social issues that others have posted 17 14 12 30 31 23 Question: How often do you use social networking sites to…? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 19: Respondents Saying Digital Media Reduces, Improves or Has No Effect on Their Effectiveness at Work, by Country (%) % Better South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Ability to find work 65 40 35 73 71 61 Ability to do your work 71 40 37 79 78 66 Ability to learn and develop professionally 77 46 38 80 77 68 Ability to maintain balance between work and personal life 58 28 33 73 74 59 Building relationships with professional contacts 69 40 39 80 71 63 Ability to collaborate with colleagues 70 39 38 79 76 65 Ability to collaborate with stakeholders outside your work organization 60 39 26 61 74 58 54 Digital Media and Society % Worse South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Ability to find work 3 12 4 2 2 4 Ability to do your work 4 14 5 3 2 5 Ability to learn and develop professionally 2 13 4 3 2 4 Ability to maintain balance between work and personal life 8 19 6 5 3 7 Building relationships with professional contacts 2 12 4 2 4 5 Ability to collaborate with colleagues 3 13 4 2 3 4 Ability to collaborate with stakeholders outside your work organization 3 12 5 3 2 4 Question: In each category, please select the choice that best reflects the effect digital media use has had on your professional life? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 20: How Digital Media Use for Work-Related Purposes Has Changed in the Past Three Years, and How It Is Predicted to Change in the Next Three Years, by Country (%) Change in past three years South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Greater 79 58 43 82 69 69 Same 15 32 45 11 27 25 Less 4 8 5 5 3 4 Don't know 2 3 7 1 1 2 Predicted change in next three years South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Greater 78 53 42 80 71 68 Same 17 37 45 16 26 26 Less 3 6 4 2 3 3 Don't know 2 4 10 2 2 3 Question: Compared with three years ago, is your use of digital media for work-related purposes….Thinking ahead three years, do you think your use of digital media for work-related purposes will be…? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 55 Table 21: Social Media's Effect on Work-Effectiveness, by Country (%) South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Improves 29 14 11 64 61 42 No effect 45 56 68 19 27 39 Reduces 24 19 13 14 9 14 Don't know 3 10 9 3 3 5 Question: What effect does use of social media (e.g. YouTube or Facebook) have on your work effectiveness? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 22: Respondents Reporting Impact of Digital Media, by Country and Attribute (%) % Better South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Empathy 63 28 32 63 70 54 Ability to make physical friends 38 24 21 60 64 45 Ability to find a physical significant other 30 20 16 51 64 41 Ability to maintain relationships with friends 65 38 41 73 72 61 Ability to maintain relationship with significant other 45 23 20 58 70 48 Oral communication skills 45 25 21 58 59 45 Written communication skills 59 42 30 67 65 55 Critical thinking and problem solving 62 39 28 71 69 56 Length of attention span 45 25 20 58 61 45 Short-term memory 42 29 22 54 66 47 Long-term memory 47 26 23 59 56 45 Motor skills 50 34 28 63 59 49 Stress 37 20 20 45 51 37 Physical health 34 17 20 46 59 39 Mental health 48 28 24 60 66 49 56 Digital Media and Society % Worse South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Empathy 5 16 6 5 4 7 Ability to make physical friends 11 19 8 8 8 10 Ability to find a physical significant other 8 20 8 7 6 9 Ability to maintain relationships with friends 5 14 5 5 4 6 Ability to maintain relationship with significant other 7 17 7 6 4 8 Oral communication skills 10 18 9 9 9 11 Written communication skills 7 15 7 6 7 8 Critical thinking and problem solving 4 14 6 5 4 6 Length of attention span 11 21 14 10 9 12 Short-term memory 8 18 9 9 5 9 Long-term memory 7 18 8 8 11 11 Motor skills 6 13 5 5 9 8 Stress 14 24 11 12 9 13 Physical health 14 26 12 15 10 15 Mental health 5 17 8 6 5 8 Question: In each category, please select the choice that best reflects the effect digital media use has had on your own private life? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Table 23: Respondents Believing that Digital Media Usage Could Create Problems for Youth of Various Ages, by Country (%) % Probably/Certainly South Africa Germany USA Brazil China % of total Younger than 2 years 49 67 43 67 47 54 2-3 years 55 70 45 69 53 58 4-7 years 63 70 53 71 68 66 8-11 years 71 64 60 71 80 71 12-15 years 69 49 60 57 83 67 16-18 years 57 33 57 45 80 59 Age Question: To what extent do you think too much use of digital media can create problems for youth? Source: Implications of Digital Media Survey, 2015, World Economic Forum Digital Media and Society 57 Endnotes 1. http://www.weforum.org/projects/shaping-future-implications-digital-media-society 2. http://epceurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/epc-trends-social-media.pdf 3. https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/digital-v-traditional-media-consumption-q3-2015 4. https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/digital-v-traditional-media-consumption-q3-2015 5. https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/09/fourth-industrial-revolution/ 6. http://epceurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/epc-trends-social-media.pdf 7. https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/fast-growth-nations-clock-up-the-most-hours-for-mobile-web-usage 8. http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/ 9. http://wearesocial.net/blog/2015/01/digital-social-mobile-worldwide-2015/ 10. https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/digital-v-traditional-media-consumption-q3-2015 11. https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/digital-v-traditional-media-consumption-q3-2015 12. http://wave.umww.com 13. Ibid. 14. http://www.pulsarplatform.com/#studies/White_Papers/1 15. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1528077 16. http://www.pulsarplatform.com/#studies/White_Papers/1 17. http://wave.umww.com 18. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/02/12/5-facts-about-online-video-for-youtubes-10th-birthday/ 19. https://meco6936.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/accessment3-participation-and-user-created-content/ 20. http://www.carat.com/global/en/news-views/faith-vs-experience-building-trust-in-the-digital-age/ 21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_consciousness 22. http://www.carat.com/global/en/news-views/faith-vs-experience-building-trust-in-the-digital-age/ 23. http://www.mariekedemooij.com/articles/goodrich_demooij_2013_journal_marketingcommunications.pdf 24. http://epub.wu.ac.at/3567/ 25. http://www.digitalnewsreport.org 26. http://www.wired.com/2015/08/times-1-million-online-subscribers-needs/ 27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomberg_L.P. 28. http://www.businessinsider.com/blendle-signs-up-german-major-national-newspapers-2015-6?)?r=UK&IR=T 29. http://www.libertyglobal.com/PDF/public-policy/The-Value-of-Our-Digital-Identity.pdf 30. http://www.statista.com/stats/166066/music%20piracy 31. http://www.libertyglobal.com/PDF/public-policy/The-Value-of-Our-Digital-Identity.pdf 32. https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/europeprivacy/ 33. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkfBTUKBnz8 34. http://www.groupm.com/news/press-releases/groupm-year-next-year-reports-slow-global-ad-recovery-5th-year 35. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140913132811-25326384-trends-in-advertising-display-ads-are-dead 36. http://fortune.com/2015/09/21/apple-adblock-stats/ 37. Ibid. 38. http://www.secretmedia.com/whitepaper/SecretMedia_Adblock&GlobalVideo.pdf 39. http://sourcepoint.com/comscore-and-sourcepoint-the-state-of-ad-blocking/ 58 Digital Media and Society 40. http://www.secretmedia.com/whitepaper/SecretMedia_Adblock&GlobalVideo.pdf 41. http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-blocking-unnecessary-internet-apocalypse/300470/ 42. http://www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/2015-edelman-trust-barometer/ 43. http://www.digitalnewsreport.org 44. http://www.libertyglobal.com/PDF/public-policy/The-Value-of-Our-Digital-Identity.pdf 45. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2989768/Facebook-slammed-advertising-funeral-directors-CANCERpatient-Promotions-appeared-sufferer-Googled-disease.html 46. http://www.iabuk.net/research/library/mediascope-europe-the-connected-life-of-digital-natives 47. http://www.smarpshare.com 48. http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140325/OPINION/140329895/corporate-social-responsibility-ismillennials-new-religion 49. http://digiday.com/publishers/5-things-learned-ny-times-2014/ 50. http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tv-and-radio/netflixs-algorithm-matches-content-to-eyeballs-and-is-rewritingthe-tv-rulebook-20150731-gintcf.html 51. https://press.linkedin.com/about-linkedin 52. https://vimeo.com/105633579 53. source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIEIvi2MuEk 54. https://www.facebook.com/about/privacy 55. https://www.facebook.com/help/443357099140264 56. https://www.facebook.com/help/239377769603639 57. https://govtrequests.facebook.com/ 58. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_NewVisionforEducation_Report2015.pdf 59. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/06/teens-technology-and-friendships/ 60. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2401429/technology.pdf 61. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/15/social-media-and-stress/ 62. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/15/social-media-and-stress/ 63. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/international/global-tech/research-arab-spring-internet-key-studies 64. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01628.x/full 65. https://research.facebook.com/blog/382753905228438/visualizing-crisis-relief-in-nepal/ 66. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/facebook-google-maps-refugees-migrants_55f1aca8e4b03784e2783ea4 67. http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/22/drug-ceo-will-lower-price-of-daraprim-after-hike-sparked-outrage.html 68. https://www.change.org 69. https://www.avaaz.org 70. https://witness.org 71. http://www.forbes.com/www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2012/11/26/6-mistakes-to-avoid-when-giving-to-charity/ 72. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/politics/digital-democracy/social-media-influence-politics-participationengagement-meta-analysis 73. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v489/n7415/full/nature11421.html 74. http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/12/30/technologys-impact-on-workers/ 75. http://www.rbs.com/news/2015/october/rbs-becomes-first-bank-in-the-world-to-launch-facebook-at-work.html 76. ttp://uk.businessinsider.com/slack-survey-shows-it-reduces-work-email-2015-10?r=US&IR=T 77. https://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-Research-Results/2013/12/2013-2014-change-andcommunication-roi-study 78. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/employment_and_growth/the_world_at_work Digital Media and Society 59 79. http://cxcglobal.com/whitepapers/Aberdeen_-_contingent_labor_workforce.pdf 80. https://www.freelancersunion.org/blog/2014/09/12/how-many-freelancers-are-there-america-53-million/ 81. http://2020workforce.com/2014/09/17/the-workforce-of-the-future-will-be-increasingly-flexible/ 82. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/employment_and_growth/connecting_talent_with_opportunity_in_the_digital_age 83. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/employment_and_growth/connecting_talent_with_opportunity_in_the_digital_age 84. http://www.weforum.org/projects/new-vision-education 85. https://www.towerswatson.com/en/Insights/IC-Types/Survey-Research-Results/2012/07/Global-Talent-2021 86. https://hbr.org/resources/pdfs/comm/RedHat/RedHatReportMay2015.pdf 87. https://towerswatson.com/en-MY/Insights/Newsletters/Global/emphasis/2014/consider-a-diverse-cross-industrytalent-pool 88. http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/social-media/social-media-violent-extremism-isis-online-speechresearch-review#sthash.aHRRdVR6.dpuf 89. http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2014/03/24/online-trolls-harvard-talk-susan-benesch/ 90. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/FreedomOpinion/Pages/Standards.aspx 91. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_InternetTrustBubble_Report2_2014.pdf 92. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539021/probing-the-dark-side-of-googles-ad-targeting-system/ 93. http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/popets.2015.1.issue-1/popets-2015-0007/popets-2015-0007.xml 94. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/539021/probing-the-dark-side-of-googles-ad-targeting-system/ 95. Ibid. 96. http://www.journalism.org/2015/06/01/millennials-political-news/ 97. http://social.cs.uiuc.edu/papers/pdfs/Eslami_Algorithms_CHI15.pdf 98. http://smapp.nyu.edu/papers/SocialMediaReduces.pdf 99. http://crx.sagepub.com/content/41/8/1042 100. http://www.digitalnewsreport.org 101. http://www.cjr.org/analysis/whos_afraid_of_a_big_bad_algorithm.php 102. http://jia.sipa.columbia.edu/social-movements-governments-digital-age-evaluating-complex-landscape/ 103. http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/business_technology/four_fundamentals_of_workplace_automation 104. http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/fc76fce2-67b3-11e5-97d0-1456a776a4f5.html 105. http://digest.bps.org.uk/2014/02/student-narcissists-prefer-twitter-more.html 106. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/27/fashion/27StudiedEmpathy.html?_r=0 107. http://www.csudh.edu/psych/Virtual_empathy_-_Positive_and_negative_impacts_of_going_online_upon_empathy_ in_young_adults.pdf 108. http://www.wsj.com/articles/is-technology-making-people-less-sociable-1431093491 109. http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/media/vodafone-group-releases/2015/groudbreaking_global_survey.html 110. http://netchildrengomobile.eu/ncgm/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/NCGM_FinalReport_Country_DEF.pdf 111. http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/I/internet/ 112. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4052222/ 113. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2012.710245 114. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21499141?dopt=AbstractPlus 115. http://www.businessinsider.com/south-korea-online-gaming-addiction-rehab-centers-2015-3?r=UK&IR=T 116. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213001842 117. Ibid. 118. Ibid. 119. http://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(12)00790-2/abstract?cc=y= 60 Digital Media and Society 120. http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/ppm/1/2/72/ 121. http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dwegner/files/sparrow_et_al._2011.pdf 122. http://www.statisticbrain.com/attention-span-statistics/ 123. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/113/4/708 124. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2401429/technology.pdf 125. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661314001065 126. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661314001065 127. https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2401429/technology.pdf 128. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html 129. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nell-minow/the-vital-role-of-convers_b_8392726.html 130. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2521556/Fisher-Price-withdraw-baby-bouncy-seat-iPad-holder.html 131. http://www.childwise.co.uk/uploads/3/1/6/5/31656353/childwise_press_release_-_tablets.pdf 132. https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/pages/media-and-children.aspx 133. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21708803 134. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/337/6100/1357.abstract?sid=2fd70c08-7fa4-4156-9af5-1b067a1807a8 135. http://www.sensomotorische-integratie.nl/CrisRowan.pdf 136. http://www.pnas.org/content/100/15/9096.long 137. http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2010/09/27/0956797610384145.abstract 138. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cdev.12166/abstract 139. http://kff.org/other/event/generation-m2-media-in-the-lives-of/ 140. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/05/multitasking_while_studying_divided_attention_ and_technological_gadgets.html 141. World Economic Forum, The Impact of Digital Content: Opportunities and Risks of Creating and Sharing Information Online, 2016, http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GAC16/Social_Media_Impact_Digital.pdf 142. http://thedatadriveneconomy.com 143. http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/self-regulation-and-stakeholders-better-internet-kids Digital Media and Society 61 The World Economic Forum – committed to improving the state of the world – is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation. The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. World Economic Forum 91–93 route de la Capite CH-1223 Cologny/Geneva Switzerland Tel.: +41 (0) 22 869 1212 Fax: +41 (0) 22 786 2744 contact@weforum.org www.weforum.org

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Sixteen Products Selected for Newly Updated Program Celebrating the Innovations Driving the HR Technology Market PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla., Oct. 05, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The HR Technology Conference & Exposition®, in conjunction with Human Resource Executive® magazine, the premier publication focused on strategic issues in HR, today announced the winners of the Top HR Products of the Year Awards. The annual competition, updated for 2020, seeks to discover the best new HR technology products. Working with the conference organizers, the editors of Human Resource Executive® conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the award submissions, including input from a panel of industry experts and analysts. For the first time, the program combined the "Top HR Products of the Year" with the "Awesome New Technologies for HR" categorization to focus on the leading-edge technologies disrupting the space. Taking into consideration factors such as innovation, the value added to the HR function, intuitiveness for the user and ability to deliver on what is promised, the following 16 solutions were named the winners: Accelerated Coaching and Scaled Mentoring Program PILOT, New York, N.Y. PILOT supports HR leaders by delivering virtual career development through a structured program of individual reflection, manager feedback, executive mentoring and live group coaching sessions. Unlike traditional offerings that are expensive, difficult to roll out and reinforce employee helplessness, only PILOT offers a turnkey solution that's affordable, quick to deploy and fosters employee agency and ownership. In just six months, participants advocate for themselves, create stronger connections with their colleagues and develop a habit of self-improvement. PILOT can be rolled out in just two weeks and handles the communications, scheduling, operations, analytics and nudging, enabling HR to play a more strategic role. pilot.coach Dayforce Wallet Ceridian, Minneapolis, Minn. Dayforce Wallet is a digital financial management solution that helps employees feel a sense of empowerment over their earnings and regain control over their finances. Built with the combination of a physical card with a digital experience, Dayforce Wallet gives employees access to their earned wages on-demand, which are then conveniently and immediately deposited into their digital wallet account. Unlike other products in the market, Dayforce Wallet leverages the Dayforce platform's continuous calculation capabilities, which means funds are accurate – not an approximation of earned wages. There are also no direct fees for the employer or employee. ceridian.com Fuel Marketplace Fuel50, Laguna Niguel, Calif. Fuel50's FuelMarketplace™ is an AI-driven internal talent mobility solution supporting organizations and their people with smart-matching to gigs, job vacancies, career opportunities and learning modules coupled with 360-degree feedback to support their continual career development. With powerful talent pipeline insights, FuelMarketplace also supports leaders to build agile teams based on best talent fit. The platform provides talent mobility analytics and trends to support workforce planning and help organizations make strategic workforce decisions, while also matching employees with career growth opportunities based on their skills and talents and creates gig networks for cross-organization project fulfillment – supporting a truly agile, future-proofed workforce. fuel50.com Language Learning Solution GoFLUENT, New York, N.Y. GoFLUENT solves an age-old problem that is a growing challenge for organizations navigating today's global talent crisis: how to accelerate language proficiency at scale. Less than 5 percent of the planet speaks English natively. Yet, it is critical to global business. Past approaches were one-size-fits-all, expensive or simply not scalable. GoFLUENT's enterprise portal delivers an experience that accelerates an individual's ability to improve existing language skills or learn one of nine languages from scratch. GoFLUENT blends three essential elements: 1) highly curated and business-relevant content, 2) an AI-based Netflix-like user experience and 3) live, 24x7 cloud-based human interaction with expert language teachers. gofluent.com Manager-on-the-Go Paycom, Oklahoma City, Okla. Managers can't be in two places at once. But with Paycom's Manager on-the-Go tool, they no longer need to be at their desk to complete approvals or perform other essential tasks involving the employees they supervise. Accessible through the Paycom mobile app, Manager on-the-Go allows for anywhere, anytime completion. paycom.com Microsoft Teams, Outlook Integration iCIMS, Holmdel, N.J. The iCIMS integration into Microsoft Teams and Outlook simplifies how recruiters and hiring teams collaborate. Recruiters can automate interview scheduling through Microsoft Outlook and solicit real-time feedback from hiring teams directly within Microsoft Teams. By connecting iCIMS with Microsoft Outlook and Teams, recruiting organizations can: Save time: automate interview scheduling and receive instant interview feedback from hiring teams without having to chase anyone down; Improve the candidate experience: empower candidates with self-scheduling capabilities based on the hiring team's Outlook calendar availability; Increase recruiting efficiency: drive productivity between recruiters and hiring teams by enabling collaboration in their flow of work. icims.com Moodtracker Workhuman®, Framingham, Mass. Built by data scientists at Workhuman, Moodtracker™ is the first and only employee pulse survey solution that combines an unlimited number of respondents, an unlimited number of surveys, AI-driven technologies like smart sampling, automated analysis, professionally designed research, and actionable insights into a single free solution. Once survey responses are collected, Moodtracker identifies and recommends the right actions to take to improve company culture, meaning organizations will always understand how their employees are feeling while simultaneously increasing productivity and driving better retention. workhuman.com Next Gen Pay ADP, Roseland, N.J. ADP's Next Gen Payroll Platform enables companies to revolutionize the way they pay their employees. Built natively on the public cloud, this real-time global payroll platform gives practitioners and employees unprecedented transparency into how they are paid. Our patent-pending taxonomy, or rules for configuring payroll, is realized through a natural language "policy catalog." This empowers practitioners to easily understand regulatory and policy changes, enabling a stronger strategic partnership with business leaders by modeling the real impact to the bottom line. The same technology delivers a breakthrough employee experience with transparency and predictive insights to model and understand the impact of potential life changes. adp.com Opportunity Marketplace Oracle, Redwood City, Calif. Opportunity Marketplace brings the flexibility of gig work to the world of full-time employment in order to meet the new demands of a flexible organization and its employees. Combining job postings and internal gigs in one place, Opportunity Marketplace provides a simple, easy-to-use tool – accessible on any device – that fosters career mobility within an organization. Internal gigs allow employees to engage in different activities within the organization and expand their network while learning new skills and experiences. With Opportunity Marketplace, organizations can maintain high levels of engagement and retention while improving the overall employee experience. oracle.com Paychex Flex Remote Workforce Enablement Paychex, Rochester, N.Y. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the critical role technology plays in facilitating workforce productivity, engagement, and compliance for all businesses. As business leaders plan for what the future of work will look like for their organization, many will shift to a remote or hybrid operation. From virtual conversations and digital document management to flexible payments and Paycheck Protection Program support, Paychex Flex® offers HR professionals, managers, and employees solutions to help them comply with new regulations, drive engagement, streamline communications, and deliver productivity from anywhere and on any device. In an increasingly complex world of work, Paychex makes it simple. paychex.com People Experience Workday, Pleasanton, Calif. Workday People Experience increases productivity by giving people faster access to answers, information, and tasks. People ask questions using their preferred channel—search, interactive chatbots, Microsoft Teams or Slack—and get instant answers from a knowledge base or recommended actions within Workday or other applications. Workday People Experience provides a personalized approach to support and guidance with new ways to communicate with employees, such as journey paths and 3rd party cards. Machine learning delivers a hyper-personalized employee experience aimed at improving efficiency, knowledge sharing and collaboration, and is supported on any device—from desktop to tablet to mobile. workday.com Pluto Pluto, New York, N.Y. Pluto is a workforce analytics and communication platform equipping companies with the tools and insights they need to build diverse, inclusive and equitable workforces. Starting with data collection, Pluto redefines what it means to take an anonymous survey. Pluto's inclusive story forms guide employees through exploring and sharing their identities and perspectives. In-depth analytics enable companies to assess strengths and opportunities and measure impact over time. Anonymous two-way messaging and incident reporting features provide a space to engage in dialogue with employees and address workplace issues faster. Pluto's proprietary privacy measures respect users and protect identities throughout the entire process. pluto.life Remote Hiring Solution HackerRank, Mountain View, Calif. The HackerRank Remote Hiring Solution empowers the candidate journey from invite to offer. Based on an intelligent skills profile by role, the platform allows recruiters to widen their reach to candidates, power technical assessments, host live pair-programming interviews and benchmark each candidate's skill set. The success of a standardized technical hiring process depends on how well-defined the skills are. HackerRank built the Skills' definition by analyzing assessments made by the HackerRank community through 10's of millions of code submissions. Once established, these skills were validated by an independent Skills Advisory Council. hackerrank.com Skills Graph Cornerstone OnDemand, Santa Monica, Calif. In times of rapid change, businesses need to understand the fundamental value an employee brings to the table to manage workforce disruptions and optimize results quickly. Cornerstone's Skills Graph helps business leaders understand, develop and intelligently deploy people with a complete view of strategic skills needed today and tomorrow. Built on a robust and constantly updated skills taxonomy of over 53,000 skills that cover an array of industries, the Cornerstone Skills Graph scans profiles, roles, content performance reviews and more to tag skills and connect development resources to the individual to maximize their development. cornerstoneondemand.com Workforce Insights pymetrics, New York, N.Y. With Workforce Insights, companies can answer key talent management questions and future-proof their workforce using a unique dataset and interactive dashboard. The data is collected when employees play pymetrics' behavioral science-based exercises, which assess an employee's cognitive, social, and emotional attributes. Using this data, leaders can: Bring Competencies to Life: Explore how teams line up to competencies such as Digital Literacy, Leadership and Teamwork; Unlock Unique Differences: Compare roles to industry benchmarks; Optimize Teamwork: Discover teams' inherent attributes and develop strategies to improve their collaboration; Pursue Data-driven L&D Strategies: Uncover how each team learns and the best training path. pymetrics.ai WorkVue Willis Towers Watson, London, U.K. WorkVue, the first-of-its-kind AI-driven software, provides a practical approach to reinventing jobs through innovative technology with real-time visualization to support decision making. It brings Willis Towers Watson's revolutionary Reinventing Jobs methodology to life and is designed to help organizations deliver on their business strategies by future-proofing the way their work is organized. WorkVue allows organizations to dynamically deconstruct jobs into tasks, evaluate ways to optimize work – across technology, employees and non-traditional talent – and reconfigure the work into new, more optimal jobs. Learn more about WorkVue. willistowerswatson.com Select winners will present on Wednesday, October 28, 2020, during the fully virtual HR Technology Conference & Exposition. For event info and complimentary registration, visit hrtechnologyconference.com. About Human Resource Executive® Human Resource Executive® was established in 1987 and continues today as the premier publication and website focused on strategic issues in HR. Written primarily for vice presidents and directors of human resources, HRE provides these key decision-makers with news, profiles of HR visionaries and success stories of HR innovators. Stories cover all areas of human resource management, including talent management, benefits, healthcare training and development, HR information systems, technology, retirement planning and employment law. For more information, visit hrexecutive.com. About the HR Technology Conference & Exposition® Founded in 1997, the HR Technology Conference® is the world's leading event on HR technology, covering all the latest trends. From strategy and selection to post-implementation, HR Tech is a pivotal stop for all organizations on their HR journey. HR Tech annually attracts industry experts, thought leaders, software vendors, senior HR executives, HR generalists, HR systems leaders, IT innovators and more. Additionally, HR Tech Conference hosts the world's largest Expo of HR technology products and services — a number of vendors even choose to announce their latest products for the first time at the conference. There is no better place to touch, compare and contrast the latest solutions from leading vendors in every category, as well as start-ups. For more information, visit hrtechconference.com.

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Yoram Yaacovi June 2020 Target Audience Government and Private Sector decision makers who are looking for guidance and directions in the post-Corona era. Objectives Assess the technology opportunities post-Corona Suggest how to leverage these opportunities Discuss potential risks in a potentially new world order Author's note: while this document focuses on technology, it does not pretend to or claim to suggest that other industry sectors are not important. On the contrary: during the outbreak we saw the importance of health-related jobs and the dependency on local agriculture and local products for our independence and well-being. Executive Summary The Corona outbreak is expected to have a substantial impact on a variety of aspects of our personal and business lives, long after the outbreak will be controlled and over. This paper is an attempt to outline the areas where technology will play an ever-growing role in our daily lives, post the outbreak, and accelerated by our experience during the last few weeks. There will be other aspects of our daily life that will change because of the outbreak, but the focus of this paper is the more frequent and broader use of technology that will follow the outbreak. In general, we will do more tasks and events remotely and online: We will work more frequently from home or from "local community hubs", which will allow us more freedom in choosing our employer or methods of employment and will allow employers to leverage work globally (sharing economy). It will be more common and more acceptable to employees and employers to meet online for business and personal occasions. We will see more business transactions that happen through online communication alone, without the need to travel to market, sell and to close deals. We will use a variety of online services which was either lightly used or unavailable before such as online groceries, telemedicine, and government services. Children and adults will switch to online learning in large numbers. Business will rely more on deliveries than on distributors or shops to sell their products. We will be more exposed to cyber threats and will need to change our behaviors in this respect. Our privacy will be compromised at least to some degree, we will have to either get used to that "relaxed" privacy, or have tools that will allow us to retain control of it. In order to be positioned well for the post-Corona era, governments will have to initiate and drive a set of programs that will require policies, regulations, funding, investments (including in communications and physical infrastructure), procurement technology, deployment in Government offices, and maybe most-importantly brace for a behavioral change, and embrace it. Trends The way this paper works is by outlining the trends impacted by the Corona outbreak, and trying to enumerate the technology-related products, services and policies that might emerge or accelerate as a result. The Trends 1. Digital Transformation 2. Sharing Economy 3. Working from Home or Remote 4. Online Services 5. Delivery and Logistics Services 6. Healthcare (Telemedicine and Big Data) 7. Remote and Online Education 8. Contact-less Payments 9. Cybersecurity and Privacy 1. Digital Transformation First, we must realize that the world that we knew just 5–10 years ago is changing immensely, even before the Corona outbreak. We are in the outset of a mega shift that we call Digital Transformation. You can read about digital transformation in Wikipedia, but it goes way beyond just everyone moving to the cloud, organizations going digital, or workers using Word, Excel, etc. (hint: they've been doing that in the last 15–20 years). What digital transformation really means is that every company on the planet is going to be — at least to some degree — a tech company and create technology. Examples: Textile and fashion companies will create wearable computing, agriculture and food companies will a variety of sensors, IoT devices and software. Banks are already creating hardware and software, and so do the car companies. This will immediately change Work as we know it. You can read more in my post about the Future of Work. Companies and governments all over the world are required to change how they look at future jobs, the job market, and how to train their employees for changing work realities. This paper from McKinsey demonstrates what companies should do in order to make it through the change, even before Corona stopped by for a visit. Many companies make the mistake of focusing too much on just the costs and ignore the potential of new technologies to generate new revenues. Companies are asked to: · Scout: Quantify their digital aspirations and assess future talent gaps and organizational readiness · Shape: Design future roles , create a talent accelerator and set up infrastructure for upskilling and reskilling · Shift: Scale up work changes, develop new skills, and scale up employee transitions Corona-related changes are likely to accelerate these trends. Recommendations: In general, we need to prepare our work force for a future that is more technological and spend time on analyzing trends and future directions, and assess future occupations. Examples of actions we can take to capture this advantage and leverage it farther, mainly in a post-Corona world: a) A state-level project to assess future trends and their relevance to the nation and its capabilities. A startup called Alpha10x is trying to help companies, VCs and governments with that prediction (for full disclosure, I invested in this startup). b) Initiatives and funding for universities, colleges, and institutes to add such occupations to their curriculum. For example, if in the past (and present) we taught CNC machine operators, in the future we might want to train drone operators. If in the past we trained ultrasound technicians, in the future we might want to train bio-hackers. If in the past and present we train web designers, in the future we want teach people to design virtual spaces. 2. Sharing Economy Beyond changing how companies (and governments) work and how they are managed, I expect that we will see a massive acceleration to what is called Sharing Economy, sometimes called the Uber Economy. In a nutshell, this means that more and more companies will work more with freelancers and contractors and less with employees. More with part-timers, and less with full-timers. More with people from all over the world, and less with people that are in a driving/bus-ride distance from the office. Currently the sharing economy model is mostly limited to delivery services (of people or goods) and to development or creative services. In the future it will span many businesses and many business functions, mainly as businesses transform to being mostly digital. With this already being an uprising trend in the last few years, the realization of effective online work models, the practices that were created, tried and improved during the outbreak, and even the reduced health risks of working remotely, will drive this trend much faster. The impact of such a trend is something that we must look into and understand its risks, challenges and opportunities. For example, as employees' physical presence dimension is reduced, and as corporations will fill the demand and execute business functions remotely and by engaging remote contract workers, it will require the development of a new set of technological, regulatory and managerial tools. Recommendations: If we start with risks, if your workers can work from anywhere, it can present risks to countries where cost of labor is high, and they need to figure out how we mitigate it. If we look at opportunities, we can take the strengths of the country, and deploy these strengths everywhere. The action plan here is simple to explain, but not as simple to execute: a) Map the strengths of the country across multiple domains (examples: security, cybersecurity, entrepreneurship/courage to take action) b) Understand where and how we can deploy these strengths globally. 3. Working from Home or Remote It is probably obvious to everyone that one of the areas where we will see a tectonic shift post-Corona is Work from Remote (WFR) or Work from Home (WFH). A trend that started to slowly grow in the last few years — with the advent of the relevant tech tools — is going to take an exponential (the most popular word these days) step post-Corona. The reasons for that are endless: (1) Corona helped us understand that it is possible to work remotely and lifted the psychological barrier (2) It is more productive (This is based on personal experience and on conversations with the CEOs of 10 tech companies. I do not yet have empirical/scalable evidence showing that) (3) It reduces costs for companies for travel, food, etc. (4) It is environment friendly, another trend that will peak as well post-Corona What is next are some of the areas that can benefit from the WFH/WFR trend. This is by no means a complete list, but only a start. I plan to expand on this in future writeups. Companies with Remote Employees First off, a much faster WFR/WFH growth curve can fundamentally change how companies (and governments) will work. This starts with the basics of companies being more tolerable about employees working from home or remote locations, or even attending meetings online when they are physically in the office. This can lead over time to lower company expenses, better employee productivity also due to reduced commute times, and likely higher employee satisfaction. But it can go farther, to companies where most of the work is online, and employees only meet physically once a week or once a month. And even to companies that are completely virtually located. See this article from the Economist. And it will not stop with the company employees, and will impact how the company scouts for employees, interviews them, and makes hiring decisions. The trend will also funnel substantial investments into tech companies that will provide disruptive solutions for working in a mostly-online work environment such as 3D holographic meetings, constantly virtual rooms, and more Outside the scope of this document are a plethora of challenges that such a WFR/WFH model will create to the fabric of our life, culture, society, health and more. Or even to the way meetings are being held, the attention of people during the meeting, confidentiality of the material discussed and more. Doing Business Online WFR and WFH will not stop at internal company meetings and interactions. Lacking the ability to travel to meet customers and to support customers on-site, companies are already adjusting to run their business completely online, and those that are not yet doing this, will learn to do it in the near future, or disappear. Even when air travel or cross-country travel will return to normal, there is no expectation that business travel will ever return to its pre-outbreak scale (Bill Gates has suggested travel for work will never be the same after the coronavirus), and we should expect travel limitations for at least a couple of years. Within this timeframe, companies that will not learn to market, create leads, negotiate, sell and support their customers online, will not survive by the time travel will be back to normal. This is true for every product or service, and not just for Software as a Service (SaaS). It is also true for investors. Technologies will emerge to support this new way of doing business. Online Meetings, Conferences and Rooms Zoom is emerging as the clear winner in this round of the Corona outbreak, and they are likely to take this leadership forward at least for some time. But Zoom meetings are just part of the solution, and usually companies with such a significant business find it hard to innovate elsewhere, even within the same domain. If WFR/WFH is indeed going to play a much more significant role in our lives, we will need more advanced technologies, better infrastructure, and new user experiences to allow us to hold really virtual meetings (3D holographic meetings,), conferences with many people and the so important mingling/networking enablers, virtual rooms to allow folks to work together all the time and not only for meetings. Another satellite domain will be HR tech, providing technology and tools for human resources teams to scout, interview, retain and manage employee relations. Recommendations: To prepare for such a shift in the working model, which I believe will happen faster post-Corona, we should think about what the requirements for such an environment will be. We also need to encourage companies that develop products in the virtual meetings space and create the necessary infrastructure. Here are some examples: a) Broader, stable and consistent Internet infrastructure to every home in the country, starting with major area hubs. b) Remote working hubs (think WeWork-like spaces) in every town, to allow people to work close to home. We can seek some private sector participation here, and I assume we can reel in the municipalities for this. c) The necessary cybersecurity for WFR/WFH. More on this in the cybersecurity section. d) The services infrastructure for WFR/WFH, such as food, delivery services, etc. e) Investments in products, tools and technologies that enable WFR/WFH. f) Guidelines, subsidies and government incentives to businesses and government offices that will use state of the art remote work tools and will demonstrate a growing use of remote work (just like we provide incentives to business in the periphery) 4. Online Services We are likely going to see a significant growth in the use of online services. These will not be only the services that flourished during the outbreak, such as Netflix and Gaming services, but also a plethora of many services, some of which we used lightly before and are expected to use much more often now (e.g. online grocery services), and some which we did not use at all before and are guaranteed to take a prominent place in our post-Corona lives (e.g. telemedicine). Some of these services are covered in detail below, while other examples will be briefly mentioned here. Governments will be expected to become much more online-friendly. During the outbreak people learned — after initial hiccups and help — to file for unemployment or for social security online. Post the outbreak, they will demand that service and similar services on a regular basis. Recommendations: Overall Governments must bolster and speed up its investment in its online services and create policies and programs to promote and encourage commercial online services. If current Government online services offerings that were leisurely deployed over time, they now became overnight mandatory services that are should be industry grade and must cover all government functions. a) Bolster and fund a faster progress of Governmental online service offerings b) Faster processes for deployment of online services (e.g. Amazon) c) Establish A government committee that will seek, identify and drive deployment of key online services that are essential for the country and its people 5. Delivery and Logistics Services Once we will emerge from the Corona outbreak, we are going to find out that many businesses that relied on stores and distributors to sell their products, had to find way to do it by themselves during the outbreak, if only to survive. Even if a large percentage of them will eventually go back to the store/distributor model, we are likely to see a non-marginal portion of businesses that will continue to market their products directly to consumers, eliminating the middleman. These will require a whole new scale and service level of delivery companies that will be able to not only deliver goods (food, flowers, medicine, etc.) in a reliable fashion, but also do it in an optimized and cost effective way. Mega players such as Amazon are likely to play a major role in this, but countries will have local players as well that will specialize in local logistics and delivery. All these players will need tools many of which do not exist today. These tools will span a spectrum of hardware and software technologies that will include drones, drone management systems, cybersecurity, delivery optimization systems, fully automated storage and fulfilment centers, and more. Alternatively, we could see technologies that will allow people to create themselves the products they need at their location or in their proximity, eliminating the need for delivery. This need can accelerate the development and use of 3D printers for a variety of materials such as plastic, metal, ceramic and later even food. Recommendations: a) Government program for preferred funding support for startups in the Logistics and Delivery space, including drone management systems, delivery optimization software, 3D printers and marketplaces. 6. Healthcare Healthcare is the area where the Corona outbreak might have had the most fundamental impact, albeit an obvious one. I selected to highlight two healthcare areas where I believe technology will play a major role post the outbreak. Telemedicine / Remote Healthcare We have already seen remote healthcare products and services being deployed in developed countries, but if there's one unquestionable learning from the outbreak is that we will have to deploy such technologies, tools and services on a global scale to allow us to diagnose patients remotely using new devices or existing infrastructure (e.g. TVs), treat them from a distance, and even allow for robotic surgeries. One example that people will connect with post-Corona is the need to be able to operate and centrally manage multiple respirators and ventilators, including the use of artificial intelligence that will replace scarce human staff. Another example could be a set of devices that can diagnose and monitor people remotely and/or without a human touch. Or technologies that can help mental health sessions by analyzing the voice or the face of the patient. We expect to see investment money flowing in these directions. Recommendations: a) Government program for preferred funding support for startups in Telemedicine b) Faster regulation to allow the use of such devices and procedures c) Incentives for HMOs and doctors that will use such technologies on a regular basis d) Drive the implementation of 24x7 medical coverage for patients through Telemedicine Big Data Analytics for Health-related purposes The different reactions and handling of the Corona outbreak in different countries, or even states and cities around the world, as well as the slow process of developing tests or a vaccine, demonstrated a couple of main challenges. First, our health system and drug development processes are still not leveraging the technology available today, mainly in the area of big data analytics. Second, as human beings, we are not able to make consistent and educated decisions when overwhelmed with unrealistic amounts of data. The Corona outbreak could be an opportunity to leapfrog over political and bureaucratic obstacles that seemed unsurmountable just few months ago, and create the legislation and environments for institutions and organizations to share patient data, using technologies such as blockchain and encryptions that will ensure the authenticity of data and its security. Once data will become available cross-organization with the right legislation (see recommendations below), even current big data analytics and machine learning technologies can make wonder in our ability to not only analyze the data, but also create insights that will help decision makers make better and more educated decisions, or even — God forbid — make decisions themselves that are free of political and ego implications. Once we feed specific medical and healthcare knowledge to these systems (Expert Systems), such algorithms will be able to make better decisions than a human being, mainly — but not only — in time of crisis. Drug and vaccine development, as well as the development of test kits and procedures, can also get a boost from the outbreak. When we understand the impact of months or even weeks on the health of people, but also on the economy, we should use technology to speed up drug development, its test procedures, and the approval process. The technology aspect here spans the ability to use data analytics to detect drug resemblance, impact on people with similar DNA, crowd sourcing of drug results, and use computing resources to accelerate drug development. Recommendations: In addition to accelerating the transition of the entire population to digital health records, we need to be able to combine and analyze the data for a variety of health-related purposes such as outbreak prediction, detect areas of specific illness, understand genetic ties and their health impacts, and develop and reduce the time for drug testing. a) Address and drive legislation of privacy rules around our health information that will allow the use of cross-organization patient data and medical records, while addressing privacy and security concerns b) Given (a), create legislation that will enable and impose the sharing of medical and health data for analytical purposes c) Government program for preferred funding support for startups in the area of accelerated drug development 7. Remote and Online Education The last ten years carried along nothing less than a revolution in online education. While it has not yet taken by storm the K12 education world, it is also omni present in post high school studies, with initiatives such as University of the People and Kahn Academy. Many high school graduates choose to learn online from the best (crowd-voted) courses out there, even if they are enlisted in a university that can eventually grant them the degree they are looking for. This becomes harder when you look at K12, mainly because younger students still require the human touch, but even in this case it is not an even ground. First, some students require it less than others, and second, older (11th and 12th grade) require it even less. The Corona outbreak eliminated some of the main barriers for online education: - It is simply not working — gone - It is a new frontier, disruptive, hard to adapt — not any more - It takes teachers out of their comfort zone — they already stepped out in the last few months. - High school students cannot learn online — not true All the above drives a very simple conclusion: the education world is ready for online education and it deserves (requires) much better online-targeted content, tools, technologies and processes that will allow for easy-to-use, productive and comprehensive remote and online learning. Yes, some students will need and continue to use "physical" learning, but let's give all the others — the majority in my mind — the content and tools they need, and create the policies and the rules that will allow them to use these tools. In addition, remote and online education can bring to a level ground students that are located remotely from major urban centers, and/or are underprivileged, provided that they will get the right equipment and tools. Hopefully, the Corona outbreak has created the incentive to do that now and despite a multitude of objections. Technology and tools will not be enough. Just taking the same content taught in class and moving it online will miss many of the advantages of teaching online. Specific content will have to be developed for use in online classes, and to reduce content development costs, it can be developed once for multiple schools/classes. Recommendations: Transitioning the country into a testimonial for online and remote education should be a nothing less but a national mission. Here are some examples of what to do that: a) Completely transform our universities to be online-based, allowing students to take courses online either here or from global source, and focus the precious and high-IQ academic staff on guiding projects, mentor advanced degrees and do research. This will also reduce the budgetary pressure on the universities. b) Fund online content development to be shared across multiple schools c) Require schools to pilot and deploy online-based education d) Direct government funding to Ed-tech projects and startups that will pilot deployment in the local school systems, mainly since this domain is not and will not be attractive to for-profit investors. e) Revise education policies, processes and methodologies to not only allow for remote and online education, but drive the change f) Create funding and program to provide remote and under-privileged students with the tools they need to join the online learning evolution 8. Contactless Payments While the US is still somewhat behind, payment systems in many countries around the world have already moved to cashless payments, and in some countries to contact-less payments thru contactless credit cards (Europe), and phone-based payments (China). The "new normal" post the outbreak, will present a major shift towards completely contact-less payments, for obvious reasons. Recommendations: Drive the adoption of contact-less payments throughout the country: a) Require government offices to create the infrastructure to allow for contact-less payments b) Create incentives for businesses that will move to contact-less payments 9. Cybersecurity & Privacy Cybersecurity and privacy are not trends, but are both super important enablers and/or outcomes of the trends mentioned above. Cybersecurity Cybersecurity started to be a big deal even before the Corona outbreak, but just try to imagine what will happen post-Corona, when the world will become multiple times more virtual than it is now, and more of the business is going to move online. When many of the interactions that used to be physical will become virtual and online. When WFH is no longer a bad word. When many businesses and verticals that never thought they will go online will do exactly that. They are already doing it in the last couple of months. The cybersecurity challenges that such a sudden change of behavior will create are unimaginable. If you have spare cash, this is where you want to invest. Everyone and every company will be looking for cybersecurity solutions. Recommendations: a) Invest in cybersecurity companies, products and technology b) Create school, university curriculum and training programs to ready more cybersecurity professionals Privacy And then there is the issue of Privacy. People sometimes confuse cybersecurity with privacy, i.e. if you are using services that are not secure, your data can be exposed and leak, and thus violate your privacy. While true, and while privacy is indeed related to cybersecurity in some respects, it is a much broader issue, which will be discussed here only briefly, addressing the post-outbreak aspects of it. Our privacy has been eroding regularly in the last 10–15 years, as technology allowed easier access to our data and our preferences. We keep struggling between the benefits of sharing our data — for example, we get better content viewing recommendations, or benefit from our medical data being available to any doctor or medical institute that needs to treat us — and the concerns of that data being shared, including being abused for purposes that can harm us. We have yet to find the balance that works for us, and I maintain that this balance will forever be dynamic. The Corona outbreak met us at a point in time when this debate is getting heated and had created at least in some countries a privacy violation precedence that could not have been imagined just a couple of months ago. So, it seems that when our health is in doubt, we are ready to forgo some of our privacy principles. Will this new balance remain post the Corona outbreak? Will some of it stick around? Will the privacy balance change in the "new normal"? We are likely to see the privacy balance change and be more relaxed. It will be hard to bring the balance back to pre-outbreak levels, and maybe we do not have to. Instead, let us focus on creating the laws and policies to allow our data to be shared, under our control, and with a tight supervision and penalties for any abuse by the organizations that have access to our data. Recommendations: a) The government and the private sector should be aware and deploy cybersecurity solutions, mainly in areas which were not that obvious until the outbreak, such as online meetings and online education b) Laws and policies to allow our data to be shared, under our control, and with a tight supervision and penalties for any abuse for the organizations that have access to our data. Consolidated Recommendations Government/Municipal 1. Focused and prompt Investment in communication infrastructure: a. Establish a national committee for next generation fast communication with budget and the power to make decisions and drive deployment b. Build a national Fast Internet Grid (FIG) similar in nature to the power grid c. Incentivize and support the private sector in deploying the FIG 2. A national plan for community hubs a. Design a national plan for cross country remote community hubs b. Create a national program with secured funding to encourage municipalities and the private sector to create these hubs 3. Focused-Investment, in initiatives and technologies that are expected to prevail post-Corona. This can include co-investment with professional risk takers, which is something we are seeing happening in the UK and France post-Corona: a. Telemedicine b. Computational Biology c. Accelerated drug development d. AR/VR effective communications e. Education Technology and remote learning f. Logistics and Delivery g. Cybersecurity 4. Transform the government and schools into an early adopter / playing field for post-Corona technologies and methodologies: a. Completely transform our universities to be online-based, allowing students to take courses online either here or from global source, and focus the precious and high-IQ academic staff on guiding projects, mentor advanced degrees and do research. This will also reduce the budgetary pressure on the universities. b. Fund online content development to be shared across multiple schools, and require schools to pilot and deploy online-based education c. Revise education policies, processes and methodologies to not only allow for remote and online education, but drive the change d. Create funding and program to provide remote and under-privileged students with the tools they need to join the online learning evolution e. Drive the adoption of contact-less payments throughout the country 5. Create policies, laws and methodologies that will not only encourage a shift to online services but will drive or even demand such a change. Examples: a. Address and drive legislation of privacy rules around our health information that will allow the use of cross-organization patient data and medical records (while addressing privacy and security concerns) and will enable and impose the sharing of medical and health data for analytical purposes b. Demand and measure the use of online healthcare and Telemedicine in hospitals and clinics c. Incentivize and support schools and universities/institutions that will adopt online learning and EdTech and will deploy them broadly d. Seek, identify and drive deployment of key online services (e.g. Amazon) 6. Ensure the availability of tech talent for the next 20–30 years by: a. Introduce mandatory computer science, coding and other tech topics at an early school age in all schools b. Continue to drive under-participating populations to tech by addressing their needs and by creating incentives. c. Allow for a permanent resident visas for key technology experts that will not only bring their expertise, but might also attract others to work with them.

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50 Best G-rated Movies on Netflix Care.comcare.com Community Parenting

Source: https://www.linknovate.com/affiliation/netflix-62237/all/?query=fulfill%20healthcare%20professionals

50 Best G-rated Movies on Netflix Care.comcare.com Community Parenting

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