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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Your Happiness Drives Your Productivity

Dale Carnegie, the famous American writer, used to say that people rarely succeed, unless they are having fun in what they are doing. Future experiments showed he was onto something 🙂 Turning frowns upside down seems to generate more work effort and engagement.

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Pizza as a Service [Infographic]

Remember the first time you landed on a paper about cloud computing “as a service?” How much of the tech jargon in there could you decipher? Chances are, not much, especially if your line of work rarely crosses paths with digital innovations.

Albert Barron, Sr. Software Client Architect at IBM, realized this on a bicycle ride when he rambled terms like SOA, WS, REST, JSON, SaaS, PaaS, and TLA to a friend who could barely articulate them back, let alone get the point of the story

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IDC: Every Company on Earth Will Be a “Software Company”

Photo by Dlanor S on Unsplash

Soon, the most precious resource of any business will not be physical, but informational. Today, only 1% of developers are focused on implementing cognitive systems to provide assistance in dealing with data. By 2018, that number will rise to 50%. In a few more years, every organization will essentially be a software company, IDC predicts.

This forecast from the fine gents at International Data Corporation (IDC) comes with the addendum that business is becoming more and more about arming yourself to the teeth with technical prowess, or else. Here are the most important predictions from IDC’s November 4 market intelligence briefing

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Are You Among the 5% with a “Great” Job?

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The most quoted jobs metric in the world, “Unemployment,” is misleading. And because we lack metrics to asses the quality of a position, we are also facing a problem in defining what a good job is. But recent undertakings shed more light on the matter, revealing where all the great jobs are, complete with the deficits that remain.

Gallup’s first World Poll was conducted a decade ago, in 2005. Then, like now, it was found that people crave a good job. Crudely speaking, this means 30+ hours per week and a decent paycheck. 1.3 billion out of the world 5 billion adults have a good job, based on this definition. 12% of these are engaged at work, in what can be considered not just a good job, but a great job

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The Secret Sauce of Innovation Is Not So Secret

Photo by Riala on Pixabay

Innovation doesn’t grow on trees, granted. But it’s not that impossible to achieve either. Most people believe it takes genius, luck, and and huge capital investments. Actually, it’s much simpler than that.

Professors Chen Chen and Yangyang Chen of Monash University, along with Edward J. Podolski with La Trobe University have conducted a joint study to determine how employee treatment leads to corporate innovative success. Their findings, hardly surprising, confirm the often-ignored importance of morale in the workplace, a matter we consider paramount here at 4PSA

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Why ‘Agile’ Is the Perfect Recipe for Business

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87% of companies in a poll by BCS The Charted Institute for IT report that the ability to manage changing priorities was among the biggest benefits of jumping wholeheartedly into an agile business model, one that factors in technology and a flexible, modern culture to stay on top of the trends, give competitors a run for their money, and ultimately achieve a healthy bottom line.

Contrary to popular belief, in-person meetings aren’t all that useless (as long as the purpose of the meeting isn’t meeting itself). Data aggregated by Raconteur indicates that 80% of agility adopters have a daily stand-up meeting. This get-together makes communication go full-circle in a collaborative culture, as studies have shown that ‘digital’ cannot and should not replace the spoken word

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Quote of the Day by Wilson Mizner

Photo by Niklas Hamann on Unsplash

Faith and doubt play in different teams. Both seek the truth, but they often clash when they meet because neither holds the ultimate answer to everything. This causes people to feel compelled to pick a battle and stick with it. Some, however, prefer a different approach: sit on the fence until further notice.

Trying to please everyone is a sure way to failure, especially when it comes to controversial matters like spirituality versus science. Wilson Mizner believed the same. It’s okay to sideline yourself when it comes to contentious matters, but it’s equally important to spectate with your eyes peeled in search of your own answers. In one of his many fits of wisdom, the playwright once let out this clever bons mot

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