Female Entrepreneurs – Leaders Born from “Disobedience”

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You might have heard us say this before, but here at 4PSA many of our software engineers are girls – more than what you’d find in a traditional tech company. And we wouldn’t have it any other way. We’re ‘naughty’ like that 😀

As it turns out, there are quite a few benefits to “a little bit of naughtiness or disobedience,” as highlighted by Lauren Knight, author of a column on parenting in the Washington Post. Disobedient children are entrepreneurial spirits that end up earning more as adults, research shows.

Truth be told, the signs have always been there. Only by challenging the status quo do we think outside the box, and it takes wits to defy authority as a child. Disobedient children are good candidates for

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The Effects of Turnover Go Far Beyond HR Expenses

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Most business owners are careful not to overspend by hiring people with only a decent skill-set in hopes of training them to become experts in the long run. But if the U.S. is any indication, this approach couldn’t be more wrong.

When making career moves, Americans don’t look inside their organization for an opportunity two switch lanes. Instead, they look into the offerings of other companies. 93% of U.S. adults report leaving their employer to

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5 Truths About Innovation That Most of Us Get Wrong [Infographic]

Innovation and disruption are hotly debated topics. Many claim to know the secret formula, but few actually deliver. There are standard practices that put you on the right path – like promoting a relaxed environment and fostering communication – but setting in place more specific processes will cause your mileage to vary.

However, innovation experts have nailed at least five truths about innovation that most of us get wrong, but at the same time they are supposedly easy to get right. This infographic won’t be enough to do the trick, but as said a few lines earlier, it’s general rules like these that put business leaders on the right path, while the rest gets figured out on the go. I won’t spoil your fun by repeating what the infographic conveys, but I would like to steal you one more minute to discuss

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The Smartest Investments in 2016 Will Be in Disruptive Tech

The fourth annual Global Technology Innovation Survey by KPMG predicts a number of technologies that will enable the next revolution in the consumer world. These include including cloud computing (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS), mobility, the Internet of Things (IoT), data & analytics, biotech, 3D printing, cyber security, artificial intelligence/cognitive computing, and digital currency platforms.

Different countries are banking on different things. Everyone agrees that the Cloud is going places, and the easiest to convince is China. Because of their faith in cloud computing, the Chinese are also vying with great enthusiasm for Artificial Intelligence (AI). But this is more common sense than it is insight.

Cloud, IoT, and Data (in short, Cloud)

A more important takeaway from the lofty report is the part about

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Jobs Involving Communication Hardest to Replace by Machines

Want to stay relevant as machines gradually take over the world? Pick a job that can’t be automated. The work done by humans is getting systematically replaced by devices as time progresses and technology makes new leaps forward. It’s a fact of life that our society is all too familiar with. But there are still plenty of tasks that will be hard to replace by gadgets.

The jobs that machines fumble over are incidentally the same jobs that make life exciting. Choreographers, fire fighters, chiropractors, art directors, coaches, and many others can breathe a sigh of relief knowing that robots won’t render them irrelevant any time soon

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Why Cloud Doesn’t Equal Savings for a Finance-Driven Mind

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The biggest roadblock in cloud adoption everywhere is said to be lack of knowledge at an executive level. Technologically speaking, business leaders don’t always know what’s good for them in the long term. Clinging to outdated systems and processes is a sure way get left behind. Worst of all, the finance sector doesn’t feel it needs any transformative effects whatsoever.

The recent Cloud Business Summit held in New York saw financial and IT leaders debate the ripple effects of cloud adoption in corporate financial systems and processes. Finance is not an area in sync with technology, and nor should it, according to those working in this segment

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Collaboration for the Fast and Focused

Focused. Fast. Delivering great results. Leading by example. A big fan of collaboration. We’re all inspired by the amazing people who possess such traits. When they get in the team, new ways of doing things are defined and everything seems to be improving. Let’s take a closer look at what drives them, and their habits.

Image Credit: James Thomas (Unsplash.com)

Image Credit: James Thomas (Unsplash.com)

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Quote of the Day By Frank Wilczek

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There are many ways to say certain things. The importance of failure as a key ingredient of success has been evoked by dozens, if not hundreds of figures throughout our history.

Among the influential minds who embraces this notion is Frank Wilczek, an American theoretical physicist and mathematician, currently the Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His line of work is complicated, to say the least. But working on complex problems means you get away with failure more often than anywhere else. Which is why the following applies regardless of one’s profession

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Skreemr: From New York to London in 30 Minutes

Photo by Joel & Jasmin Førestbird on Unsplash

Great news for future business travellers! If you think Concorde planes – traveling at twice the speed of sound – were fast, prepare to be blown away by what’s (supposedly) coming next. A new concept design for a hypersonic aircraft called the Skreemr is on the radar and, among the many similar concepts we’ve heard of recently, this one’s by far the most ambitious.

Designed by Charles Bombardier and rendered in pretty pictures by artist Ray Mattison, the futuristic aircraft would hit speeds of around

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Is Today’s CIO Tomorrow’s CEO?

Current CIO strengths versus ideal characteristics of a successful CIO | Credits: Deloitte

IDC recently said that virtually every big organization will soon be a software company, capable of churning out its own code and sustaining its own digital existence. Here to lend credence to that forecast is a hefty report from Deloitte University Press which dots the “i” with a focus on CIOs and their job descriptions as of late

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