EXPERIENCE
E X P E R I E N C E #3
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ANDREAS WEIgEND, Amazon pioneer says the world undergoing a ‘Social Data Revolution’’ VINT CERF, one of the fathers of the Internet, foresees the future of the Internet of Things LAÉRCIO COSENTINO, CEO of TOTVS, bets on creativity allied with information
pARTneRSHIpS Ari de Sá School and UBEC: succ ess with IT in an educational environment
thE pAth Of thE
n E WMaN Scientific and technological advances in the quest to go beyond the limits of the human body
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WELCOME In a society increasingly influenced by technology, we ask you to consider the new needs and desires of the future individual”
E X P E R I E N C E #3 w w w.tot vs.com /experience
Realização
PUBLISHER Flavio Rozemblatt chief editor Flávia dratovsky EDITOR OF INNOVATION Gabriela Mafort Designers daniel razabone / daniela barreira REPORTING TEAM Andréa de Lima / Carlos Vasconcellos COLLABORATOR Reinaldo José Lopes PHOTOGRAPHER Anna Carolina Negri / Léo Corrêa
TOTVS CEO Laércio Cosentino TOTVS executives RODRIGO CASERTA / Lélio Souza / Flávio Balestrin Marketing Team
Diana Rodrigues / Cristiano Cunha / Aline Luiz The authors are responsible for the signed articles, which do not represent the views of the magazine, editor, or TOTVS S.A. The reproduction of materials and articles will be permitted only with previous written authorization from the publisher and with the acknowledgement of source credits. All rights reserved. TOTVS Experience magazine is not for sale. TOTVS - Avenida Braz Leme, 1631, Santana, São Paulo, Brazil Private Operations Office – Rua Ministro Jesuíno Cardoso, 454, Itaim Bibi.
Photo for disclosure
As you read this month’s issue of TOTVS Experience, I invite you to reflect on the evolution of man. In a society increasingly influenced by technology, we consider the new needs and desires of the future individual. More than that, it’s about how technology is transforming and enabling new behaviors. Throughout the following pages, we explore the convergence of biology, technology and the human being. We will also delve into studies related to biomedicine and how they come to frution and potentially change the course of humanity. Human beings will never be the same after the emergence of current technologies. There is no question about this. Now, we need take a look at all spheres of life (health, education, entertainment, family and work) and discuss what future generations will be using and what they will need. It is precisely the diversity and complexity of the human being that matters most, something that no machine will be able to overcome. We can use robots to expand our analytical capacity, life expectancy and comfort, but the personal universe of each one of us is what really makes a difference in a world with so much information. I hope you enjoy our perspective and the articles that follow. Best regards,
Access www.totvs.com/experience to read the digital version of this edition.
Laércio Cosentino, CEO of TOTVS
c o n t e n t s 4
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06 PROFILE São Paulo-based doctor innovates diagnosis of genetic diseases with a software that increases speed and accuracy of DNA analysis 08 WORLD Ecuador adopts public policies based on the Knowledge Society, with an emphasis on collaboration and participatory networks. 12 INTERVIEW Physicist Andreas Weigend, former chief scientist at Amazon, says that we are living in a ‘Social Data Revolution’: knowing how to interpret personalized data is the key to success 16 COVER The search for a super-man--stronger, healthier and more interactive--propels researchers in the areas of neuroscience, biotechnology and robotics
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24 CURRENTS The impact of Artificial Intelligence on how organizations and people relate and are positioned in the market 30 SOLUTIONS
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TOTVS invests in applications for mobile phones and tablets that increase productivity and transform the way of doing business 34 BEHAVIOR The Internet of Things has emerged as the new technological evolution and opens unprecedented opportunities for investment
41 INFOGRAPHIC The world of connected things: projections show the size of the Internet of Things in less than a decade
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42 OPINION Segmented product offerings require specialized professionals, constantly updated and collaborating with clients and workteams 44 COMPETITIVeness Denis Minze, Executive Director of the Lemann Foundation, writes an article on the role of technology in boosting Education 46 In FOCUS Encouraging creativity and focusing on individual talents are attitudes that increase employee engagement and motivation 52 Sustainability Social entrepreneurship reinvigorates volunteer work and is added to the ranks of more traditional forms of volunteerism
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56 SUCCESS STORIES Pioneers in the use of TOTVS solutions for the educational area, Ari de Sรก and UBEC discuss the road to success
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P R O F I L E 6
THE WIZARD OF
DNa Neurologist David Schlesinger is one of the creators of a method that is revolutionizing the diagnosis of genetic diseases by Flávia Dratovsky photos by Anna Carolina Negri
I
nnovation has always been the name of the game for São Paulo native David Schlesinger. At the age of 16, he was among the finalists in the International Science and Engineering Fair Intel ISEF – which involves 65,000 high school students from all over the world – with his project on Hodgkin’s lymphoma. While in his fourth year of medical school at the University of São Paulo (USP), he was invited to do postdoctoral work at Harvard. He spent a year at a Harvard lab during the development of the genome project, in which 99% of all human genes would be sequenced. The experience marked Schlesinger’s career. Now 35 years old, and specializing in neurology and human genetics,
Specialist in neurology and human genetics, the doctor David Schlesinger is President of Mendelics
Schlesinger is president of São Paulo-based Mendelics, a laboratory founded in 2011 and responsible for an exam that is helping to revolutionize the analysis of genetic diseases in Brazil. Through software developed by the laboratory, some 5,000 diseases – from serious epileptic syndromes to cardiac arrhythmias and predisposition to cancer – can now be diagnosed with unheard of accuracy and speed, through the analysis of 20,000 genes present in the human genome. Schlesinger tells us the initiative was initially met with skepticism. “My partners and I were always seen as contrarians. Everyone said: ‘this is going to be very expensive’ or ‘it will generate too much data, impossible to analyze. But, to innovate, we must start before the ideal point, look ahead and move forward,” he notes. In addition to him, Mendelics was founded by three addi-
obtained by competitors from other countries. And the plan is to reach 99% by the end of this year.
Software Called Abracadabra Schlesinger explains that each genome generates 150 gigabytes of data. With a common exam, it takes one to two months to analyze every gene. Mendelics analyzes more than 20,000 genes in two weeks. To give an idea, the Human Genome Project took 13 years and US $3 billion to sequence a genome. In 2008, a new technology in the United States greatly cut the cost of the process, which now is about US $30 million. When Mendelics started, it cost US $20,000. Today, for the patient, the exam costs US $5,000. The results of the software, currently in the second genera-
tional individuals: the psychiatrist André Valim; the neurologist
tion, are so good that the program was dubbed by Abracadabra,
Fernando Kok (colleague at the Human Genome and Stem Cell
in reference to one of the three Laws of Clarke, the science fic-
Research Center at the USP Institute of Biosciences) and João
tion writer Arthur C. Clarke, according to which “any sufficient-
Paulo Kitajima, a participant in the first Brazilian Genome project.
ly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. De-
The four unite clinical knowledge of genetics and bioinformatics
spite the joke, Schlesinger keeps himself grounded in science.
to create a system that interprets the genome scan. With that,
“There’s no genius in our work: there is a lot of time, dedication
the lab has between 90 and 95% accuracy, compared with 75%
and experience,” he says.
To be innovative, you must start before the ideal point, look ahead and move forward” ETHICAL D E C I S I O N S
The impact of the exam on medical treatment is enormous. David remembers a patient who, during 15 years, suffered from serious anemia, treated as autoimmune disease. “Through Abracadabra, we discovered that it was a genetic disease. It impacted her treatment, her family, and the medical conduct,” says David. In another case, three people from the same family developed a rare type of cancer. The test showed a flaw in the same variable in all three. With that, the whole family was able to discover other relatives who also had the mutation. A host of new ethical questions are raised at every turn. “We do not interfere in the conduct of the doctor, but offer the most information possible. Ten patients with the same disease may have ten different clinical indications for treatment. Medicine is not an exact science,” Schlesinger explains.
LEARN MORE www.mendelics.com.br
W O R L D 8
Ecuador adopts transition plan for the collaborative society and becomes a reference on the international scene by Gabriela Mafort
T
he government of the bucolic community of Sigchos, located in the middle of the Cotopaxi Province in the Andes, just bought an area of about 2,000 hectares for projects related to collaborative agriculture. The engineer Mario Andino Escudero, who manages the Ecuadorian region, is enthusiastic about the manufacturing laboratory, FabLab, which he plans to set up in the area. It will be equipped with 3D printers so young farmers can put innovative ideas into practice, printing parts and equipment to improve production and allow the growth of the local economy, which is essentially agricultural. The intent is that FabLab becomes a pioneer manufacturing model, in other words, items created there may be reproduced free of charge in other parts of Ecuador. Administration of this “factory” will be shared between employers, workers, residents and general population. Escudero, an expert in georeferencing technologies, has been one of the most active participants in the collaborative reform that is changing the country, the FLOK Society. “I really believe that this initiative will change the way of thinking of my community. Even I changed my view of reality based on the disseminat-
ed knowledge and am beginning to have new ideas to promote change,” he says. An acronym that brings together the concepts Free, as well as “Libre” (in Spanish) and Open Knowledge, the FLOK Society is a change agent aimed at creating a society based on cooperation. In practice, this refers to projects that cut across 12 areas, such as education, culture, health, industry, agriculture and technology infrastructure. The goal is to change forms of production of the traditional economy, which is hierarchical and based on finite resources, to ways of horizontal participation, based on networks and infinite resources, like knowledge. “The world is looking for a change in the productive structure in response to the international financial crisis. This is a hard battle to change the economic model in Ecuador, towards a knowledge society,” says Xavier Barandiaran, one of the leaders of the FLOK Society. Public Consultations on Important Issues The FLOK society was created by the Ministry of Knowledge in Ecuador, the Department of Innovation and Technology and the National Institute of Advanced Studies, with the participation of key civic movements in the country, It operates based on processes in networks, which started with consultation workshops for the population of the country’s 24 provinces to gather suggestions on the sectors most sensitive to change and tools to be used. More in-depth interviews were conducted in some specific communities. From there, a summary document, which was available for consul-
From left to right: Cards with the campaign slogans, “Release the knowledge”. Mobilization of the public in a plaza, Ecuador. View of the city of Quito with the Cotopaxi Volcano in the background. Photos for disclosure / Shutterstock (Volcano)
Network
ERUPTION
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The FLOK Socie t y is a change agent that aims to create a new economic matrix in Ecuador, based on collaborative production of goods and services.
tation and comments on the Internet, was developed. “My document with the transition plan had about 70 public comments, which I think is quite a lot for a dense document,” says Michel Bauwens, Director of Research of the FLOK Society. After the completion of this phase, a major conference involving local organizers as well as international experts interested in knowing about the Ecuadorian movement was held. During the summit, 14 roundtables discussed the main lines of action in different fields and, finally, documents with concrete actions to be taken were developed, with pilot projects for each area. “This is a historic event. The FLOK Society brings legitimacy to a new paradigm that aims to reconfigure the roles of the state, the private sector and even civil society. It became a focal point for the global community, which is seeing for the first time a collaborative program that is this organized on a national level. What we had before were small local projects,” says Bauwens, also a leading figure of the P2P Foundation, which aggregates and promotes collaborative actions worldwide. He highlights that, in addition to the projects, it is also important to create a new legislative ecosystem that offers conditions so that initiatives can evolve. In this sense, the drafting of the Organic Code for the Social Knowledge Economy of Ecuador, a set of laws that will govern this transition, is ongoing. The code has an Internet wiki page and is open to collaborations worldwide. Latin America is the ideal location for a project like this. According to Bauwens, “there is a convergence between a return to the importance of the role of the state, with investments in education and combating poverty, and also a strong collaborative movement.” Techonology Generates Collaboration Janice Figueiredo from Brazil coordinated one of the working groups in the first phase with the topic “Physical infrastruc-
Michel Bauwens, FLOK Society Research Director. Photos for disclosure
tures for collective life,” and notes that the background of the reform is to create an alternative to this period that we live in, in which development generates strong technological possibilities for collaboration. In the FLOK organization, the researcher explains, civil society becomes the engine of creation; the decisions become bottom-up, in other words, coming from society. The market gains a new role, to enable a sustainable economy. The State becomes more of a partner rather than an administrator of greater weight. “FLOK’s idea is to reverse the current logic and stimulate the sharing of via open technologies. In this way, society will naturally create an awareness and consume more sustainably,” she predicts. Janice notes that projects based on collaboration among peers, like the act of replacing private transportation by carpooling, reduce energy consumption by 80%. “This is a representative effect of the material expenditures in the economy,” she emphasizes. Another example cited by Janice is the Wikispeed car, which, with the advent of 3D printers, is manufactured locally in sustainable FabLabs.
The FLOK Society isn’t even a year old, but it has already inspired a transition in Spain. Michel Bauwens will coordinate a similar initiative in Catalonia, which will be based on the transition plan used in Ecuador. The project received an award nomination from the British Katerva institution, which recognizes sustainable initiatives for their contribution to human development. International Community Recognizes Importance of the FLOK Society For Neal Gorenflo, director of the collaborative cities network and the platform Shareable.net, headquartered in San Francisco, the FLOK Society is a pioneering strategy. “It makes sense to remove the huge artificial barriers that exist in society in order to spread knowledge as the foundation for this economic transition,” says the American. Gorenflo just coordinated a curatorship of collaborative projects around the world, a kind of political guide for the transition in search of new collaborative models. In the study, housing, transportation, food and employment were elected as the most relevant areas. They represent most of the expenditures in a home and are responsible for much of the emission of carbon dioxide. “These areas are the most important when considering the two main challenges facing humanity: equality in quality of life and the environmental crisis.” Among the most important recommendations of the guide is free parking for shared cars in order to stimulate this type of transportation. Washington D.C. and San Francisco, in the United States, are two cities that have already adopted this initiative, with remarkable financial and environmental returns. Allowing short-term rental contracts in residential areas and modifying the laws to favor cohabitation and the creation of urban ecovillages are also among the priorities proposed by the document. In British Columbia, Canada, the local government has created an “Ecovillage Zone” which replaced the old legislation for rural areas and created conditions for the construction of 40 individual houses, an organic farm, an education center and small industries, all working in a collaborative manner. Looking at the issue of job creation, the general recommendation is to stimulate small businesses with incentives ranging from public restaurants for entrepreneurs to adjustments in legislation for small residences. That was, these areas can be used as headquarters for collaborative projects. “A phrase by the futuristic Bucky Fuller that is a favorite in circles of innovation says: ‘You never change things by fighting the exist-
ing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete,” recalls Gorenflo. The success of FLOK the Society in Ecuador is closely linked to the culture of the indigenous peoples of that region, which are based on the Inca civilization, historically known for its highly technological organization and sustainable intelligence. The support of these communities has been an important ally in this transition. “The knowledge of the Andean-Amazonian cultures directly influences the achievement of balance of social relationships and the balance with the natural and cosmic surroundings. They are a source of well-being, happiness and productivity between generations, something we call Sumak Kawsay, or Good Living,” explains Ana Lucía Tasiguano, management specialist for community development and a member of the Ancestral Knowledge group in the FLOK project. The researcher Michel Bauwens mentions how the great lesson to take from Ecuador is that the leaders who were most excited by the collaborative projects were representatives of indigenous communities “that have a lifestyle of sharing.” He points out that there are some challenges to be faced in implementing this model of change across the world, like the hierarchical position of the State, but the FLOK Society is the first sign of a real explosion in networks.
I N T E R V I E W 12
hysicist Andreas Weigend, is a consultant for one of the largest companies in the world when it comes to how to transform databases into valuable businesses. He has had the role of chief scientist at online retailer Amazon.com and created, alongside Jeff Bezos, strategies to strengthen the maxim: “The only reality is the consumer reality.” Worldwide speaker, with experience in the General Assembly of the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, he believes that companies need to adopt transparency as the new rule and accept that the traditional view of privacy has lagged behind. As the head of the Social Data Lab at Stanford University, Weigend argues that the movement he named the “Social Data Revolution” will promote human individuality, with important effects on all sectors. During a stroll through the hills of Santa Teresa, Rio de Janeiro, he spoke exclusively to Totvs Experience.
You have been saying that the world is living in the Social Data Revolution, referring to a turning point in history, with changes to power structures and the organization of society. The Industrial Revolution was a transition from small manufacturers to large production machines. What is the main change the Social Data Revolution is promoting?
B
i
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Name: Andreas Weigend from: Freiburg, Germany resume: former VP at Amazon.com, consultant, lecturer, professor of UC Berkeley and Stanford University, heads the Social Data Lab at Stanford
In the Industrial Revolution, every worker was equally replaceable, while the Social Data Revolution makes each person a unique being. We now celebrate individuality and cultivate relationships. This is the period we’re living in. Individuals went back to being the protagonists, while the Industrial Revolution removed people from this role.
just here doing my job” were viewed as the most valuable. Nowadays, professionals who question their own work have added value, those who ask themselves if what they are doing is really right. And there’s something else: in the past, the first thing people needed to learn was how to handle the
Generally, what are the new key skills that companies should look for nowadays?
data. In the present stage, it is much easier to find
People who are curious and have the ability
like TOTVS that already do this.
to tell stories. In the past, when we worked in
So the value nowadays is in the people who ask good
traditional factories, curious people were not
questions and create good stories, people who challenge
needed. On the contrary, those who said “I’m
the data. Thus, knowing how to create a dialogue with
people with this ability, and even entire companies
the data is the new competency. Interpreting and
Individuals went back to being the protagonists, while the Industrial Revolution removed people from this role”
analyzing the data is where the value is. The Age of Internet of Things, the digital universe will be multiplied by no less than ten times by 2020. What will the ground rules be for dealing with this new dynamic? How can we turn mass amounts of data into new businesses? Well, in general, the number one rule is to start with the question and not with the data. As I said, nowadays,
THEEMPEROR’S
NEWCLOTHES Transparency is established as a rule in the business world and the new challenge is to please consumers by Gabriela Mafort photos by Léo Corrêa
Andreas Weigend in Santa Teresa, historical neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro
I N T E R V I E W 14
managing data is easier, but asking the right questions,
benefit. This is a strategic error. Companies should be
knowing what information to extract, is the most
transparent; allow you to track what they are doing
difficult and strategic thing to do.
with your data and not force the issue. Privacy is the
The second step is knowing that many of the questions
right to be left alone, without having your boundaries
have already been answered by someone else, by some
overstepped. So transparency with respect for the wishes
other company, and are accessible on online databases.
of the consumer is the new privacy.
Often, the challenge is gathering the answers that have already been given. In this world where companies, governments, and people generate huge amounts of data, a collective movement of openness and more transparency of information is happening. At a conference in Santa Clara, California, you defended the increasing openness of company information.
You talked about strategic errors in dealing with the consumer. What are the correct metrics for this new reality of transparency? If marketing departments follow the wrong metrics, they consistently upset you. But if companies write the right business equation, they are aligned with their consumer. I, for example, share my geolocation and you can, through my website, even know which chair I will be
I believe that, nowadays, privacy is an illusion. There
sitting on in my next flight. But that does not mean I am
is no doubt that there is a new meaning to privacy that
giving permission for anyone to talk to me during the
is transparency and companies must act respectfully.
flight. I’m giving the company all the information and
It is sad, for example, when they pretend they are
hope to have better services according to my profile, but
offering things to you when really, it is for their own
don’t overstep the boundaries when I say no. The right
The value nowadays is in the people who know how to tell stories. Knowing how to create a dialogue with the data is the new competency”
this data, and keeps a history of it. But shouldn’t I, the person whose heart the pressure was taken from, be the metrics are guided by an attempt to measure satisfaction, the level of enchantment of the consumer. How charmed is the consumer? This edition is about the techno-species, this new version of man that will deal with a huge amount of available data. How will this access to data impact human life, like man’s relationship with health care, for example?
one to have ownership of the data? Applications that monitor health are beginning to change this ownership. How do you see the application of computer engineering to medicine? You mentioned that it has been easier to diagnose and even treat illnesses because people are sharing data. Today, one billion people carry mobile phones with various sensors and a world of applications, such
Imagine a startup from Palo Alto that offers health
as health apps, which measure your heartbeat and
care wherever individuals are. It makes the most out of
know how fast you are walking. They produce this
the connections we have to really connect those who
data 24 hours a day for a billion people. This scale of
have medical questions to those who have answers. The
measuring data via technology is what is really new.
emerging currency in this new model is social: physicians respond then and there, earning the respect of their peers.
What business trends will emerge from this?
So if you really have to go through a medical procedure,
I think the new technological frontier will not come
you may consider hiring this doctor whose comments
from expensive equipment, which cost millions of
you deemed as high quality, and pay them accordingly.
dollars; this is not where our next wave of discoveries
Another new thing about this economic system is
will happen. Innovation will come much more from the
ownership. In the United States, in health records, the
transformation of this large amount of data. That’s what I
physician who takes down my blood pressure possesses
see as the technology that will make a difference.
C O V E R 16
Technologies that combine neuroscience, robotics, and biotechnology offer the promise to transcend human nature, but there are many obstacles to overcome by Reinaldo JosĂŠ Lopes
hat would happen if alien biologists, born in a star system light years away from us, would set foot (or their equivalent appendages) on Earth for the first time and try to classify the human species? It may be assumed that a civilization capable of interstellar travel also has an excellent grasp of the theory of evolution, leading their scientists to place humans in a group with species most closely related to man. According to biogeographer and American writer
FROM
chimp a nz E E
T O i M mort a l ? Jared Diamond, of the University of California at Los Angeles, responsible for drafting the imagined experiment described above, the most natural conclusion to draw is that ETs biologists, following evolutionary principles, would classify us simply as “the third chimpanzee” (an expression that leads to the title of one of Diamond’s most eloquent books, released in Brazil in 2011). In other words, from the point of view of a dispassionate visitor from another planet, humans would not be seen as more than a slightly idiosyncratic species of the great African monkey, much like the other two types of chimpanzees on Earth, the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) and the bonobo or pygmy chimpanzee (Pan paniscus). There are even scientists – earthlings, this time – who argue that it would be fairer to include these primates in our own biological genre, adding to the already known Homo sapiens the company of Homo troglodytes and Homo paniscus. Sophisticated political alliances, manufacturing tools, cultural traditions, the ability to recognize themselves in mirrors and even wars of conquest – phenomena that, for centuries, seemed unique to man – are merely the beginning of the list of characteristics we share with them. The question is whether the coming decades will stage the first scenes of the divorce between human beings and their ‘cousins‘ – or, even more, between humans and all other life forms on Earth. For some visionaries, the combination of a number of emerging technologies, from regenerative medicine to computer science, could mean that. In the not too distant future we will transcend his modest role as the “third chimpanzee”. The real scenario, however, is still complicated. Despite the acceleration of knowledge on how to optimize human capabilities through technology and biomedicine, there are still fundamental knowledge barriers that must be overcome. In the following pages, the goal is to look beyond the hype to form a more accurate picture of the promises and perils in
this search for transcendence - and anticipate how this new version of man and his needs will be in a world increasingly mediated by technology.
BRAIN-MACHINE INTERACTION From the point of view of those who bet on the radical redefinition of human nature, it would be fair to say that the opening ceremony of the World Cup this year was an anticlimax almost as big as Brazil’s defeat. Many people expected a futuristic spectacle, the star of which would be the exoskeleton designed by Brazilian neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis’ staff – an artifact controlled “by the strength of the mind,” which would help a young paraplegic man to walk and kick off the tournament. At least on camera, the feat did not happen as planned – the guy who wore the skeleton only slightly kicked the ball in a show that lasted only a few seconds. In interviews, Nicolelis said the time constraints imposed by FIFA were responsible for the apparent lack of results of his project – according to him, in trials, several volunteers with paralysis were able to take steps with the artifact, and kick with high accuracy. To put an end to the controversy, the neuroscientist and his colleagues still have to publish their results in a specialized magazine, and be reviewed by other experts in the field – the established process performed by the scientific community to assess the importance of an experiment. However, the embarrassing spectacle in Itaquerão showed that we still need to overcome a formidable amount of obstacles before the so-called brain-machine interfaces stop being unreliable prototypes. Amid the possibilities of brain-machine interaction, the ones that involve controlling the movements of external objects are among the simplest, since knowledge of the motor “maps” in the cerebral cortex is one of the most consolidated.
C O V E R 18
An even more ambitious frontier involves maximizing human cognitive capabilities with electronic assistance – through “memory chips”, for example. After all, the information required to speak a new language or learn history, for example, translates into a set of connections and flow of neurotransmitters between brain cells. Connecting to a “brain pen drive” could be a way of quickly acquiring these data without spending hours in the classroom. The problem is that, although knowledge about the mechanisms of memory has advanced, we are still far from knowing whether it is possible to transform electronic data into information encoded in the brain. This is due, among other things, to the fact that experiences in the “real world” – in the case of learning a language, the mouth movements needed to pronounce the words – seem indispensable in producing the connections between neurons that create a memory. For the director of the Brain Institute of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Sidarta Ribeiro, the great man-machine interaction does not need sophisticated implants. “What will make us cyborgs in the future won’t be brain chips, but sophisticated communication between computers and the Internet with our sensorimotor interfaces. An example would be the transformation of the current Google Glass into a contact lens,” he argues. For the specialist, the brain-silicon junction will be marginal in the mix of man and machine. “The communication channels that evolution built – the sensory in-
Shutterstock
Nanotechnology is considered one of the ways to a possible human transcendence
What will make us cyborgs in the future won’t be brain chips, but sophisticated communication between computers and the Internet with our sensorimotor interfaces”
puts and motor outputs – are much better interfaces than electrical stimuli and records in the brain,” he says.
Robots, from Micro to Macro If the permanent union between brain and machine has proved to be a difficult challenge, it may be interesting to focus on the equation part with respect to machines, other researchers argue. Could “pure” robotics be the answer to our search for transcendence, whether as an indispensable adjunct to human welfare, or a way to give new wings to consciousness? One of the bolder proposals, made by American aerospace engineer Eric Drexler in the 1980s, involves nanotechnology – techniques for manipulating objects on a scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Drexler claimed it was possible to construct nanobots capable of self-replication (more or less like living cells). These nanoautomats could be remotely controlled to perform tasks – even navigate the bloodstream and
Photo for disclosure
The man-machine interaction is one of the areas in which scientists have invested
organs of a patient, correcting defects in DNA and destroying bacteria or tumor cells. Decades of research later, nanotechnology did actually consolidate itself as one of the most important in the creation of new products in various fields of the industry, even in the field of biomedicine. However, there are no nanoautomats in sight – not even a prediction of when they will sail into the bloodstream. “Drexler is not very well-viewed by researchers in the area nowadays,” says physicist Cylon Gonçalves da Silva, deputy coordinator of special programs at the Research Support Foundation of the State of São Paulo (FAPESP) and nanotechnology expert. The dream of nanobots encountered the very nature of the nano-world. As Gonçalves da Silva explains, the nanometric world tends to be dominated by the constant agitation of molecules in suspension, especially in a liquid medium like the human body. Making a microscopic robot move in this context is like trying to make a ping pong ball move unimpeded in a bucket of honey, he compares. This means that simplistic designs, like building a nanosubmarine to travel through the arteries, become unviable: the gears would stick. “This mechanized view of nanotechnology brings a certain con-
tempt for the ‘flesh’, for human biological matter, implying that objects made of metal and circuits are superior to supposedly primitive cells,” says British physicist Richard Jones, from the University of Sheffield, author of Soft Machines: Nanotechnology and Life. Jones proposes an alternative vision for the branch. According to him, the best path for machines at a nanometric scale is to incorporate lessons of design from biology, drawing on protein molecular motors and other typical cell structures. They would be “soft” machines, as suggested by the title of his book. His proposal has been gradually gaining more followers in the scientific community, but putting it into practice requires a “return to the drawing board” and a lot of basic research. In the macroscopic world, on the other hand, the processing capability of electronic systems continues to increase. For scholars like American inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, this upward trend indicates that pattern recognition abilities of computers will match that of natural human capacity in the coming decades. On a visit to Brazil in 2012, he stipulated the year 2029 as the “magic date” for that to happen. Kurzweil’s ideas are radical, but his record as a futurologist is respectable – in the 1980s, he already predicted the populariza-
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tion of the Internet. The inventor is an enthusiast of intelligent machines – according to him, something inevitable – and the possibility that we will unite. For him, in a few decades it will be possible to spend a lot of time connected to 3D virtual environments indistinguishable from the real world. By the end of the century, it will be possible to spend all the time in these environments. User consciousness could be fully transferred to environments in silico and would no longer depend on its “traditional” organic support. It is likely that many of us will still be here to verify the predictions made by Kurzweil. From the point of view of present knowledge, they come from controversial assumptions. Chief among them is the idea that the creation of machines with intelligence and consciousness be simply a matter of processing power. It’s a possibility – perhaps a critical mass of data processing really exists, similar to that obtained by the mass of neurons in the human brain, from which intelligence simply emerges, like an epiphenomenon – , but it is equally possible that it is an architectural problem, not one of processing power. In this sense, while the key to this architecture is not deciphered, adding more and more terahertz to the processor will not solve the problem. In regards to the question of architecture, the scientific problem of human consciousness remains challenging. As philosopher of the mind Daniel Dennett of Tufts University says, the incentive to recreate something like the human mind may not appear easily. “Could we, in theory, create a mechanical bird capable of doing everything a real bird does? Yes, but it wouldn’t be worth it. It’s the same thing for conscious robots. Developing one would be more expensive than putting astronauts on the moon,” he notes.
The Eighth Day of Creation The difficulties in using electronic and robotic approaches to intervene in complex biological systems, such as our bodies and brains, could indicate that the most feasible thing to do is to try to speak the same “language” as the human body – the language of DNA. After all, it is in the genetic material that instructions for building biological machines are, at least in outline. Deeply and accurately intervening in this context is the goal of so-called synthetic biology, which has among its pal-
The futurologist Ray Kurzweil argues that, in a few decades, it will be possible to live in virtual 3D environments” adins important figures like Craig Venter, the American biologist-entrepreneur who led the private effort to sequence the human genome and now leads an institute with his name. Synthetic biology, from a conceptual point of view, intends to go beyond the creation of transgenic organisms. The idea is not only to occasionally insert one or two genes of interest (a stretch of DNA which confers to resistance to herbicides, for example) in the plant or animal genome. Instead, it is to design new complete metabolic pathways or even “customize” whole organisms. This goes for both the search for new industrial processes – instead of relying on oil to produce plastics, we could use synthetic bacteria – as well as for the human body. Synthetic chromosomes could harbor DNA able to correct genetic diseases – or characteristics that are judged desirable, from intelligence to longevity, passing through eye color. Before this, it is vital that we understand more precisely how genes interact with each other and with the environment in which the organism develops. “I think the restriction is experimental,” says biologist Alysson Muotri, a Brazilian who works at the University of California at San Diego. “In order to draw conclusions of a causal relationship between a gene and an environmental stimulus, we need evidence generated by controlled experiments. Once we have this evidence, tested and proven, we will be able to enter the phase of modeling and prediction.“ This knowledge will certainly accumulate, leading to new and more effective ways to meet economic, environmental and health problems. However, what we’ve found so far on the biological nature of the “third chimpanzee” suggests that one can never underestimate its complexity. It is about a kind of complexity that maintains balance and, at the same time, resilience and fragility – the kind that requires a lot of knowledge and care before changing it.
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L a ĂŠ r c i o C o s e n t i n o _ Inter view
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n a world full of technology, where each person has longing and desires, the multiple private universe of every human being is what makes the difference. For LaĂŠrcio Cosentino, CEO of TOT VS, even with Big Data and its ability to relentlessly provide quality information, the greatest wealth of a society remains the diversity and complexity of the human being. This is something that no machine will be able to overcome. Read the following interview with TOTVS Experience.
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How would you describe the differences between people today and those in the early twentieth century in terms of what we call “technology” and what it allows us to do? LC: Today, everything we see has already been digitalized. Any search, any new information, any supplement of what you already know, if you need it, all you need to do is get on a search engine and you will have the information. That information overload requires us to have an opinion about everything that happens in the world. Therefore, there is little time left to reflect, to study, to learn more and in more depth. Previously, a lack of information actually gave us time to seek answers. Now, as we are very demanded, we don’t even have time to absorb all the information. Then we have to make choices: what we want and what we don’t want. Do you think man used to be deeper, more complex than today? Do you think he is shallower in his choices because of the current speed of things? LC: In the past, you couldn’t be shallow because the information wouldn’t keep up with this. You had to basically deepen your understanding, really know the case, in order to defend yourself and take a stance. Because, for whatever you were talking about, you had to really provide a whole basis in order to get a group of people to believe you. Nowadays, you can put a subject on the agenda, and quickly, people will already be connecting and seeking information to support you or bring you down. Previously, you went to university to seek knowledge. That’s where the knowl-
edge was. The most you had was the book, which could be of help. Today, you go to school, you know what the subject will be, you know what the topic will be, and you can already anticipate everything. What is the teacher’s role? To write on the board? You go to university to discuss issues, to be monitored, and to be assisted. What new trends or technologies are envisioned and may increase the gap between what we were and what we can be? LC: The main point we are discussing is called data communication. While it is not possible to give mobility to information, the world will not advance significantly. With Internet on mobile devices you can make a big difference, because at any time and any place it becomes possible to seek information to obtain knowledge, to position oneself, to join a discussion, and make a decision. The breakthrough was, in fact, the World Wide Web. The technologies of human enhancement, whether genetic, cybernetic or pharmacological, are cited as one of the major technological aspects for modification of “humanity.” Do you agree? What are the main future manifestations that they could provide? LC: Surrounding all this technology, all this innovation, there are systemic advances in certain parts of our lives. Whether it is in the form of studying, working, or living. Technological advances can contribute to the health of each of us. There are multiple items we
It is not enough to offer what the client wants. I need to offer what he doesn’t even know he wants but could be using to make his life easier. can list here, such as transportation: how we will be transported, and others. When you speak of health today, for example, there is the whole question of the genome and its sequencing, which enables the study all kinds of mutations and propensity to diseases, including those that are hereditary. It is possible to anticipate and avoid problems. Having access to such a technology is an incredible asset, both for behaving differently and living better, with quality. Another side exists, in the case of health, where the account on this public folder won’t close in any country. Life expectancy has been increasing steadily and knowing, in advance, what genetic load a given population carries can influence the cost of public health. You have very relevant information and, to anticipate and prevent problems, you can close the account. It’s the so-called predictability of behaviors and events when faced with the mass of data and information that you have. In the case of education, where the student already knows what you will teach, there is no point in showing him what he can get on the Internet. You have to show the practical cases, why it happened that way, what he can
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take from this example, and where he can get new information about it. What are the vectors you see from these new behaviors that are key change? LC: Whoever wants to offer something to this new generation has to take a step ahead of each of our needs. There is so much information reaching us that we can’t share, we can’t talk to anyone. We lose the simplicity of living, of talking, of having a chat, of giving a hug. There’s no point in telling this new
generation the obvious, we must show them the way. If I’m traveling and a travel agent knows where I’m going, for example, he has to give me tips on things I will enjoy, he must do research about me – perhaps on what I would not like, so it can be a counterpoint. With the connection, networks and new technologies, human beings will never be the same again. Full stop. This we know for sure. The technologies that will emerge will be a byproduct of the choices made by these individuals, who behave differently. Therefore, I think the most import-
ant thing is that we discuss these new behaviors. From the moment you start to be tracked, offers are made all the time. You say, “No more. I want to choose.” We need to search for something different. From the point of view of data, in the case of a company, common sense deems it’s important to know what your customer wants. Anyone can do that. I need to offer what he doesn’t even know he wants but could be using to make his life easier. Creativity is lacking so that all information, called Big Data, is used for the benefit of each of us.
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the long road of
Artificial intelligence Future populated by thinking machines promises to change the way we relate and work by Carlos Vasconcellos
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etecting bank frauds, financial decision making, simple news writing for websites, tactical designs for soccer, customized retail offers, personalized music and movie programming. These are just some of the numerous possible applications of Artificial Intelligence technologies that are already being used by companies and research institutions. Without the tools created from this branch of computer science, advances such as DNA sequencing or improvements in weather forecasting would have been otherwise impossible. The list is almost endless. What’s the limit? Controversies exist. “We are far from the romantic ideal of autonomous machines that we see in movies or science fiction books, like the computer HAL from the film 2001,”
says Fabio Cozman, coordinator of the Artificial Intelligence Special Commission of the Brazilian Computer Society. “On the other hand, we have made important progress in the development of machines that are able to learn from new data inputs and understand natural language.” These applications can already be seen on major websites for shopping, searches or entertainment. “The Google system is all about the principles of Artificial Intelligence, which are also present in the recommendations systems of Amazon products, or in the algorithm that controls movie suggestions on the Netflix page,” says Cozman. In practice, Big Data Analytics has been changing the way individuals and organizations interact and do business. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology estimates that the mar-
We are far from the romantic ideal of autonomous machines that we see in movies or books of science fiction”
ket for Artificial Intelligence solutions will grow exponentially from € 700 million in 2013 to € 27 billion in 2015. Another study, released by Oxford University in 2013, points out that AI c ould replace half the jobs in the United States in the near future. For Domingos Monteiro, CEO of Neurotech, a company specialized in Artificial Intelligence solutions, technology allows man to exceed the limits of his analytical capacity. “This is critical in a world where decision making is becoming increasingly complex,” he says. Monteiro uses retail operations as an example. “Fifteen years ago, the Internet was an embryonic platform and multichannel retailing did not exist,” he recalls. “Today, companies in the sector need to deal with information collected at the point of sale, on shopping websites, on mobile applications and in call centers.
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F rom the B e g innin g s of P hilosophy to A dvanced S cience Catalan philosopher Ramon Lull speculated for the first time about the possibility of producing rational thoughts artificially.
The term Artificial Intelligence is launched by John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky and Claude Shannon at a scientific conference. The bombastic predictions made by scientists for the next 10 years did not materialize.
Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts present a model of artificial neurons, considered the first fieldwork in the area. The term Artificial Intelligence did not yet exist.
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Aristótle attempts to systematically describe the set of rules followed by the human mind in making rational decisions.
British mathematician Alan Turing designs a machine that shows the feasibility of performing any formally defined calculation by means of a physical device.
Herbert Simon, Allen Newell and JC Shaw develop the IPL-11, the first programming language oriented for problem solving. A year later, they create the Logic Theorist, a program able to demonstrate mathematical theorems.
Robert K.Lindsay develops Sad Sam, a program that reads sentences in English and has the ability to infer conclusions from text interpretation.
decade of the 21st century will reach working age. “This generation will be the first to have grown up completely in a culture of mobile connection. They will have a very different configuration to Generation Y, X and Baby Boomers, with a power of choice that no previous generation has had,” says Monteiro. “Companies will need tools to understand the information generated by these consumers, who were practically born with a cell phone in hand,” continues Monteiro. “This ability to capture and interpret data will set apart who will lead the market and who will die out.”
This generates a level of complexity that human beings are not able to process without the help of Artificial Intelligence.” And increasingly, these tools will gain ground. A Gartner survey shows that 90% of the data that will be available in 2016 has not even been produced yet. “It’s not possible to keep up with this geometric growth without technological tools,” says Monteiro. “It’s a matter of survival. Those who don’t will be at a disadvantage”. In fact, there is a generational factor that will intensify the use of Artificial Intelligence technologies in business. Within 15 to 20 years, children born at the end of the first
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The term singularity was first used in 1965 to describe the moment when a smart machine, able to endlessly improve its own performance and design, would acquire conscience. The ethical implications refer to the Greek myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from the gods. Theoretically, there may be no physical barrier that prevents the creation of a superior arrangement to the human brain. But there are ethical implications and risks involved. Recently, in an article signed with scientists Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek, physicist Stephen Hawking warned of this danger: “It’s tempting to dismiss the notion of highly intelligent machines as mere science fiction. But this would be a mistake, and potentially our worst mistake in history.” For the group of scientists, the advent of singularity would probably be
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the greatest event in human history, with the potential to bring great benefits or huge havoc. Fábio Cozman, coordinator of the Artificial Intelligence Special Commission of the Brazilian Computer Society, considers two major issues: is creating conscious machines really possible? Is it desirable? “It’s an interesting discussion, but one that is not the focus of more pragmatic technological development,” he notes. To Cozman, the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence in everyday social life is already large enough to raise ethical and even political discussions without having to delve into futuristic speculations. “There is much to discuss, like the limits of privacy, control of data collection or possible civil rights violations in the use of Artificial Intelligence in surveillance and spying systems,” he concludes.
Eliza, a software written by Joseph Weizenbaum of MIT simulates the service psychotherapy, and tricks some patients into believing they are talking to a real therapist.
The computer Deep Blue defeated the world chess champion Gary Kasparov.
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IBM creates the Watson supercomputer. The machine wins a round of three straight games of Jeopardy, a TV gameshow, against the two biggest program champions. The prize of $ 1 million was donated by IBM to charities.
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Shank and Abelson develop scripts, which are the basis for many of the techniques used in Intelligence Artificial and programming computers nowadays.
Therapeutic intelligent systems under development, allows detect emotions for interacting with autistic childs.
A Russian software, which simulates the personality of 13 year-old boy’s, Eugene Goostman, is approved in the Turing Test. More than 30% of scientists who spoke in a chat with Eugene thought it was a real boy. Scientists dispute the experience that would been lax.
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I, Robot - Isaac Asimov Forget the movie with Will Smith and read Asimov’s original work. In a series of short stories, the author attempts to answer the question: what can be done to prevent intelligent machines from turning against their creators? Is it possible to control Artificial Intelligence via pre-programmed rules, such as the famous 3 Laws of Robotics? Neuromancer – William Gibson This is the book that inspired the universe of the Matrix trilogy. Henry Dorsett Case is a hacker who steals valuable data in cyberspace, a three-dimensional virtual region
However, Monteiro points out that - at least while Artificial Intelligence technology does not advance to a new plane human intelligence still presides over data interpretation. “The capacity for analysis of AI systems is so great that they often run into so called spurious correlations, which can lead to false conclusions if not disposed of by human intelligence,” he says. Such is the case of a study on school performance in Brazil where the system showed a correlation between low scores
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where all of the planet’s information is gathered. The future set by Gibson is dystopian, but his vision of Artificial Intelligence is very close to the direction taken by this technology in the real world. Ghost in the Shell – Masanume Shirow Manga that mixes science fiction, crime thriller and a dash of philosophy. A cyborg cop migrates through different bodies whilst hunting the Puppet Master, a criminal hacker in a futuristic Tokyo. The villain is an entity created in the sea of information, which left his physical form to become an electronic element, capable of invading the minds of its victims.
and the distribution of school meals. “The sample combined students from private and public schools. Students in private schools, who had better performance, did not receive meals, but this is simply a casual relationship and the machine cannot interpret that.” In any case, while AI has not quite reached that point yet, it will help us deal with the increasingly complex world that human intelligence has been creating every day.
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Allen Institute for Brain Science – The center brings together the most creative researchers in the field of neuroscience. The institution is behind the Human Brain Project, which aims to create an infrastructure for large-scale computing using supercomputers and machines that simulate the biophysics of human brains. https://www.alleninstitute.org/ MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory – created from the merger of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratories in 2004, CSAIL hosts some of the brightest minds in the field, including British Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the World Wide Web. Managed by robotics expert Daniela Rus, the laboratory conducts multidisciplinary research in important areas such as Big Data, Robotics and Wireless Communication. http://www.csail.mit.edu/ Centre for the Study of Existential Risk – Linked to Cambridge University, the research center devotes itself to studying potential threats to the survival of the human species, among them Artificial Intelligence. The institution investigates the creation of secure protocols for the development of this technology. http://cser.org/
The Future of Humanity Institute – The Institute is affiliated with the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Oxford. Using mathematics, philosophy and science, the center tries to anticipate risks and opportunities of the technological revolution. Artificial Intelligence and the use of technology to create cyborgs are on their agenda. http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ Machine Intelligence Research Institute – The MIRI is formed by a group of independent programmers in California, whose mission is to ensure that the creation of superhuman Artificial Intelligence has a positive impact on society. They fear a lack of transparency in the development of algorithms that drive the technologies of Artificial Intelligence. http:// intelligence.org/ Google X Labs – The objective is stated. Sergey Brin and Larry Page want to complete the cycle of Artificial Intelligence and someday create machines with human intelligence. To do this, they keep the Google X Labs, with cutting-edge research in AI and robotics. This is where the Google Glass project and automatic driverless car originated. http:// www.businessinsider.com/google-on-artifical-intelligence-2014-7 Future of Life Institute – The organization was created by some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley and has scientists like physicist Stephen Hawking and the director of the Center for Intelligent Systems at the University of Berkeley, Martin Russell, among its members. The group recently issued an important alert about the risks of unmonitored development of Artificial Intelligence. http://thefutureoflife.org/
the tecnospecies Digital culture scholar, journalist and PhD in Information Science, Carlos Nepomuceno has accompanied the development of digital culture since 1994. According to him, the arrival of the Internet has brought a paradigm shift similar to those caused by the creation of print media and the invention of radio and TV. In this context, Nepomuceno sees the development of Artificial Intelligence tools as something that is part of human evolution. “We have always been a techno-species,” he says. “A lion or a fish only count on their natural brain, without support tools. But not man. Language and writing are cognitive technologies, but over time we have incorporated these mechanisms as something natural. “ The researcher explains that, through these and other mechanisms, our brain creates a cognitive environment that broadens its potential through increasingly more complex tools. In this sense, for the doctor, Artificial Intelligence research is therefore just another round in the eternal struggle of man to improve his own brain.
Logistics Challenge According to Nepomuceno, this was essential in dealing with the challenges of population growth. “The planet’s population increased from 1 billion to 7 billion in 200 years, causing a huge logistical problem. So we need faster software and algorithms for decision
making that include nonstandard variations that a human would not notice”, he says. “There’s no going back on this revolution”, Nepomuceno continues. “Want to go back to the past? Kill a few billion people. Without technology it will not be possible to sustain the planet’s population.” Issues such as privacy and data control, in turn, are tensions that historically accompany the development of the technology itself, the researcher observes. “When the press came, nobody was signing books afraid they would end up in a bonfire. The author figure arises when the Church lessens the pressure against possible heresies,” Nepomuceno recalls. Now, we are going through a crisis of governance caused by new information technologies. “From this crisis, new social, political and economic models will emerge, with the development of new cognitive patterns, in a radical process in the medium and long terms.”
Incubation Period For Nepomuceno, the technology of Artificial Intelligence in this scenario begins to lead to something more sophisticated, with tools increasingly able to learn from experience and improve their judgment. “When these machines create conditions to reproduce independently, we’ll have initiated a new species. Another being with another brain that, for him, is not artificial, but natural,” he predicts.
“This is no longer fiction,” continues Nepomuceno. “In cutting-edge laboratories, this possibility is beginning to emerge.” Naturally, such a jump will not happen quickly, but, according to the researcher, it is already possible to anticipate it. “Peter Drucker used to say that when you see a small tree you can foresee where its branches will grow. The first networks for data transmission at a distance were created in laboratories in the 1960s. We then had networks for the academic audience in the 1980s, until the beginning of its mass spread in the middle of the next decade and the emergence of social networks, starting in 2004. Every technology has an incubation period and the Artificial Intelligence is no different. “ Regarding the ethical implications involved in the creation of a conscious machine process, Nepomuceno argues that all technology brings liberation and imprisons us at the same time. “Just look at what has happened with smartphones” he says. “In any case, there’s a difference between allowing the technological evolution to happen and completely losing control over it,” he concludes.
L earn more European Commision: http://migre.me/mr8LO Oxford Martin School: http://migre.me/mr8Sl The Independent: http://migre.me/mr8Uz
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Management in the Palm of Your Hand
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ransform the user’s everyday routine and work towards new attitudes that change traditional ways of doing business- this is the goal of TOTVS’s mobile solutions. “They are apps that transform procedures and increase agility and productivity. They go beyond simply taking the system’s interface to a cellphone or tablet. The concern is always about how the app is going to bring the professional closer to the management system and how it will change the way a task is performed,” says vice-president of Systems and Segments of TOTVS, Gilsinei Hansen. This is how TOTVS solutions reach environments once hostile to technology. For example: fields, where tablets are used on the plantations; construction work sites, where mobile devices substitute the use of paper forms; and delivery trucks, with the automation of merchandise distribution. There are over 40 apps, which cover all of the TOTVS segments. “Adding more technology to the business procedures shortens the time spent on a specific task, creates other ways of doing things, and shortens steps,” Hansen says. The market increasingly searches for management solutions that recognize that users are no longer just sitting behind their desks. The companies demand solutions that bring their system closer to the place and time where things are actually happening – in Brazil, for instance, the corporate culture of using smartphones is very strong.
TOTVS invests in applications for mobile apparatus that increase agility and productivity, transforming the traditional way of doing business by Flávia Dratovsky
TOTVS develops three categories of mobile apps. In the first category, the business procedures happen via Fluig interface, through the layer of workflow and the app in cellphones and tablets. The second category, TOTVS Smart Mobile, is directed to data capture, reports and actions. To create it, TOTVS uses a development platform integrated to all of the company’s softwares. The third category of mobile apps includes the ones that unite specialized contents. They require multiple sources of information, brought from the ERPs and other systems, and integrate them in the mobile devices for a much more specialized operation. In this category are apps such as GeoSales, for the logistics and distribution sector, and the AgriMobile, for agribusinesses. With opened and connected architecture, all of these solutions allow the clients to personalize and develop new apps easily. “The application of fluid technology in TOTVS management systems imposes acceleration in adopting a new architecture that is more open and more connected. We are advancing towards a path that we’ve already been following, of exposing more APIs in our softwares, which makes personalization easier,” explains Gilsinei Hansen.
Convergence of Devices For full user integration, one of the concerns for full user integration is the convergence of devices, so that interfaces are similar. “If a commercial rep uses an agenda on his mobile de-
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A m a g g i is Pioneer in A g rimobile Mobile technology has reached the fields of group Amaggi, based in Cuiabá, and has changed daily life for the better. The division Amaggi Agro – which administers 22,4000 hectares of soy, corn and cotton production in Mato Grosso – is the leader of the segment since 2010 and uses tablets with the TOTVS AgriMobile solution to collect data on the field. “With the existing solutions at the time, the data collected on the fields arrived at the office, but stopped there. Employees on the front line had access to the generated indicators. We wanted to go the opposite way: taking the indicators to the field, because these are the professionals that, when well informed, help make decisions and optimize tasks,” says the control and production manager of Amaggi Agro, Ricardo Moreira. Substituting paper forms, AgriMobile offers agricultural data collecting and phytosanitary control with pointing out of plagues, inspection
vice, he has to find the same structure when he uses a company computer. That’s we created very similar screens. Wherever the employee is – be it on the tablet, cellphone or in the office – , the user experience has to be very similar,” says Hansen. New app updates will be launched at least every two months, via Fluig or other platforms. As mobile solutions become more ob-
locations and history of occurrences, in addition to voice, text, video and photo storage. Through the native GPS, it is possible to map every plantation area. The tool is the result of a close partnership between Amaggi and TOTVS. “We invited a TOTVS team to spend days on the field, getting to know the end users. There they could understand the difficulties of each coordinator that would use the tablet, working under the sun, with few resources,” says Moreira. The results of the app were very positive. The data input time decreased – paper forms took up to 10 days to be inserted in the system. The quality and precision of information increased. The digital inclusion of employees encouraged the interaction in the company. “It was a pioneer investment that had the backup of direction from the Group in being aligned with our pursuit of sustainable management, optimizing resources and avoiding waste,” summarizes Ricardo.
jective and are developed so operations become simpler, the development itself is less complex and transforms the system’s way of thinking. “Mobile apps fit perfectly into the principle of TOTVS of launching incremental releases of their solutions, that is, more constant updates with lower change volumes and a softer transition between versions,” she adds.
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As one of the most promising Mobile Collaboration startups in Silicon Valley, in the United States, Moxtra is the first international partner of the TOTVS Fluig platform. The mashup mixes the productivity and collaboration platform for document management (ECM) with innovative web tools and mobile voice conference, in addition to issuing of documents by Moxtra’s work groups. “This partnership marks the launch of TOTVS’ strategy of having international mashups with Fluig. This way, we strengthen our own innovations with expertise of leading companies in their segments in other countries. Fluig becomes a portal to what exists in terms of the best technology abroad,” says TOTVS vice-president of Platforms and Cloud, Marilia Rocca. Moxtra has as their co-founder and CEO Subrah Iyar, an Indian who now lives in the United States. Expert entrepreneur in the Saas (Software as a Service) industry, the executive is one of the pioneers in web conferencing, and founder of WebEx Communications, acquired by Cisco Systems in 2007. For Marilia, partnerships such as this streamline access to innovative technologies. “Uniting expertise in mobile collaboration from Moxtra with document management from Fluig, we are able to offer an innovation that, instead of taking two years, TOTVS, reaches the market in six months”. Moxtra’s app allows the user to organize, from a cellphone or tablet, conference calls with multiple participants. During the meeting, the documents stored in the company’s Fluig ECM are shared through a cloud and all participants can contribute by adding text or voice notes. At the end, the document with all of the notes is yet again stored in Fluig as an attachment to the first one. Through the web and mobile, it is possible to text, voice chat, and share screens without it being necessary to install plug-ins, different from other meeting tools available in the market. The solution is of great interest to segments such as health, education, and construction, in which there is a need to work remotely in groups to discuss collaborative editing of documents. “A construction company, for example, may discuss the plant layout of a building in a meeting with many engineers; edit the layout; take notes; record the meeting; save it again in the company’s system, with it all being documented, such as in an official meeting documentation, and create a new version
Some Applications Offered by by TOTVS Pre-sale Agility - For the retail sector. The application integrates with the company ERP to allow sellers to budget and record customer purchases in the system without having to go to a service terminal. Therefore, it is possible to monitor the client through the store and run the pre-sale through a smartphone. Top Mobile - For the engineering and design segments, construction companies and real estate developers. Ensures real-time monitoring of costs at the project sites. With the application, it is possible to achieve better workforce planning and greater control over costs of materials. TOTVS GeoSales - For wholesalers and distributors. This a sales force automation solution combined with business intelligence. Allows for viewing of sales maps, active and inactive customers, order capture, management of reports. Fleet Tracking - Specialized for managing vehicles, through integration with vehicle cargo tracking, optimizing travel and reducing logistics costs. Time Sheet - Application for recording of hours worked and reimbursable costs. Designed for law firms. Education Mobile - Learning platform, with registration, courses and evaluations. Health - Makes the agenda of the doctor available, in addition to accredited network guide. CRM Mobile - For seller check-in and check out, inclusion of prospects in CRM, and tracking of hours. Indústria - Application with functions such as environmental reporting and maintenance requests for equipment and other assets.
In Moxtra, a building’s floor plan is discussed in group
Photo for disclosure
Fluig and Moxtra, Partnership on Collaborative Mobility
of the layout,” exemplifies Marilia. Through the identity feature of Fluig, it is possible to determine the people who will take part in the meeting – employees of the company, suppliers, clients – and to give them different access permits. “The app unites social resources, content management features (ECM) and the identity features of Fluig,” explains the Vice-president, noting that the Fluig platform also offers document management, procedures management, analytics and integration tools with other systems. The integration with Moxtra is native in Fluig and takes on the name of Fluig Meeting. “The client becomes very confident about trusting a Brazilian company who knows their needs well and offers a Fluig layer integrated to any transactional system, knowing that this layer will connect him to the whole world,” Marilia Rocca adds. I n t ervie w w i t h
Subrah Iyar
Photo for disclosure
Co-founder and CEO of Moxtra after having created the pioneering WebEx, Subrah Iyar is considered a visionary and entrepreneurial leader in the SaaS industry. In an interview with TOTVS Experience, he recounts how his company became interested in the Brazilian market, where mobile devices are key. He also reveals that the day-to-day of his sons helped him create Moxtra and to bet on an innovative collaboration tool.
How can Moxtra and TOTVS collaborate with each other in this partnership? SI: TOTVS is a solutions innovator for businesses and we are innovators in communications and collaboration applications. Users have sought to unite the three Cs – context, communication, and collaboration. With this partnership, we hope to match the TOTVS solutions with Moxtra’s powerful collaborative communication, in order to increase the efficiency and end-user productivity. We appreciate this partnership, which is very important to Moxtra, as well as an opportunity to enter the Brazilian and Latin American markets. How do you analyze the markets in Brazil and in Latin America? SI: It is essentially a mobile first market. Brazil is the fifth in number of cellular subscribers worldwide, with a quantity greater than the number of inhabitants. For most of these users, the cell phone was their first computing experience. The design for all our tools is mobile first too.
For TOTVS mobile solutions, the interface is the same for cellular and desktop
Photo for disclosure
We believe that we are especially well suited for this market, to the extent that we build our solutions based on mobile communications and collaboration, and we then extend it to the web. What’s Moxtra’s greatest differential and the most important innovation? SI: Moxtra offers all the necessary tools for more effective teamwork. For group tasks, there is a need for more powerful ways for everybody to communicate anytime and anywhere. That’s why our solutions assure all the tools: messages, task management, pages, and notes for visual collaboration and meetings. Our features are easy to use for both mobile devices and the web. We do not see any company coming close to offering what we offer. With our Moxtra SDK, TOTVS customers have access to our features directly from TOTVS solutions. How did your previous experience led to his creation of this application? SI: Most of our team worked together at WebEx and we were leaders in web conferencing. We saw the exchange of text messages take off among consumers and the digital universe reach the entire planet. It is clear that mobility is the big trend of our generation. When my children were students, they could not find a solution that answered their needs in relation to the study group. It made me realize that the solutions available, created before messages and cell phones, did not meet the needs of the new ‘mobile’ lifestyle. We strive to create a new solution for group communication and collaboration for our new lifestyle. What are the next projects for the company? SI: We have many new interesting releases for Moxtra. We plan to add video to the Moxtra Meeting. Moxtra SDK will continue to receive new features. We want to make the pages more powerful and to work on new cool features that will integrate Moxtra to other mobile applications, as well as make notifications more practical, among other innovations.
B E H A V I O U R 34
INVISIBLErevoluTION The Internet of Things is consolidated as the third wave of technology and generates business opportunities worth trillions of dollars by Gabriela Mafort
T
he profound technological revolution that will define the twenty-first century will go unnoticed in our routine. Devices will enter everyday life and gradually become so enmeshed in our lives that we no longer will be able to distinguish what is technology and what is not. If by the time you read this sentenceyou have already thought of the intimate, personal and mobile computing that surrounds us. Laptops, tablets and mobile phones connected by wireless networks, skip to the house number three on the map of this game. Think, for example, of a smart gas station that, through sensors, identifies the vehicle and automatically suggests an oil change; or going into your vacation home and experience a thermostat system that is activated at the very moment residents come in, at the ideal temperature.All this, almost without human mediation. This last idea, developed by a startup in California, was recently bought by Google for just over $ 3 billion, in a sign that the Internet giant is with both feet inside the third wave of computing, the so-called Internet of Things (IoT).”We are in a time when there is availability of interoperation between different devices via the Internet, and appropriate technology to embed computers and sensors in the items of our daily lives,” explains Professor Guilherme Travassos, of Coppe-UFRJ, an expert in ubiquitous computing and human-machine interface. Coupled with technological development, there has been also a price drop, which made it possible the consolidation of the so-called “third platform”.”The Internet of Things, or machine to machine communication, had a small boom in the 2000s, but did not go ahead because of the high cost.The sensors at that time were expensive. Back then, just the technology was developed, but not the solutions on top of it. Applications began to be developed more recently, “points Ram Rajagopal, a Brazilian researcher who leads the Stanford Sustainable Systems Lab in Palo Alto, California. One of the laboratory’s objectives is precisely creating innovative sensor systems linked to analytical software, known as end-to-end service, ie from the sensors to the analysis of the data generated by them.
Services Gain Status In addition to Google, companies like Cisco Systems, General Electric (GE), Intel Networks, and TOTVS develop projects related to IoT. However, “any industry is to become a software company,” predicted the CEO of GE, Jeff Immelt, in one of his annual letters to shareholders.He meant that all sectors will
need to understand the impact of this new wave and incorporate computing in the design of the items that they manufacture, redefining production logic. “The connected products are going to generate data, which will be more valuable than the product itself, creating a new range of services to be offered by the companies,” analyzed a recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on the subject. A good example is the American company Climate Corporation, created by two former employees of Google and purchased by Monsanto for about $ 1 billion last year. The company is analyzing data from sensors scattered around plantations and innovated the business model by joining insurance companies and going on to sell insurance against adverse weather conditions for the agricultural sector. “There is a big change from the IoT, not only for IT, but for all sectors of the economy, and it’s worth discussing the impact that this may generate, not only on the economic environment, but also on the social one,” says Vicente Goetten, Executive Director of Totvs Labs in Silicon Valley. To Goetten, some professions are in danger of being extinct, as a result of this revolution. “If we think a combination of Google’s autonomous car connected with the car rental company Uber, there may be no need for taxi drivers in the near future.”.
Challenges in Adapting to IoT The new hyperconnected process brings the need for new skills for businesses. “In an scenario of Internet of Things, in the position Chief Information Officer (CIO), so common in companies, the ‘I’ no longer means Information and becomes an ‘I’ of Innovation. This professional will have the mission of seeking to create value from the application of technology to the business by improving efficiency or creating new sources of revenue. He should be much more ingrained in the operations and the corporate strategies than today, “says the consultant Cezar Taurion, of Litteris Consulting. In addition, the teams should be multidisciplinary, including professionals from various fields, from innovative to developers, who can work in a coordinated manner to generate on-demand solutions for customers. “The advent of the Internet of Things transforms how companies should think identity management. If a decade ago the technology corporations concentrated their efforts to control and monitor access to data users of their software, the
B E H A V I O U R 36
new frontier of identity management shall deal with the access of things to the system”, points Vicente Goetten, of Totvs Labs. The staff management policy, the IoT environment, must include strong collaborative efforts with the outside world. “In order to develop their key skills, the focus of companies changes to emphasize new partnerships, rather than always just build internal skills. Understanding how other ecosystem members monetize becomes important in the long term,” said Rene DiResta, of O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, which invests in innovative projects, in a blog text for Harvard Business Review (HBR). The value creation of the products also has new rules. “In traditional businesses, creating value means capturing the enduring needs of customers and make well-designed products. In the
world of IoT, the products are no longer a finished work. Because of the data updates, new features and functionalities can be added all the time. And customer needs can be captured in real time and constantly monetized,” writes Gordon Hui, consultant of Smart Design, in the HBR blog. Those are needs that have a huge business potential. This Internet of Things market generates today revenues of $ 5 trillion, but is expected to reach US $ 9 trillion in 2020, with growth rate of 8% per year until then, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). The Information Technology (IT) sector alone should see its revenue from IoT projects jump 12% in the same period. Much of this business will come from the public sector in Smart Cities projects, which tend to approach governments and citizens in more efficient processes, which reduce costs and increase productivity.
Connecting products on the web will be the 21st century electricity” Songdo, in South Korea, was one of the first cities in Asia to adopt projects of Internet of Things. The city expects investments of $ 40 billion over the next 10 years in systems such as, for example, a residential touchscreen console for monitoring energy expenses, which generates online reports to the government.In Lake Nona city, Florida, investments are around US $ 2 billion over the next decade, in projects that
Photos for disclosure
For Canova and Goetten, of TOTVS, the brazilian market is opening to IoT
include video conferencing in medical appointments. The patient can be attended by doctors and do simple tests, such as auscultating the heart, through the online system. In the city of Nice, France, a smart parking alerts drivers about spaces and has the potential to reduce traffic congestion by up to 30%, as well as the emission of CO2. “In more mature markets, the consumer is forcing this movement. In Brazil, this type of technology is coming slowly, we cannot say that it is already mainstream, “says Weber Canova, Vice President of Technology of Totvs.In the opinion of Canova, the country needs to invest in infrastructure connection and also in access to devices, because many of them are imported and still are very expensive when they arrive here. “We suffered from the so-called Brazil cost. I travel to keep up with what’s going on out there, but you have to respect the time of Brazil. What differentiates the country is the access (or no access) to these technologies,” he explains. Two sectors that Canova highlights here as potential leaders of Internet of Things projects are the insurance industry, which has already explored the use of sensors in vehicles and the health industry, which is opening fronts to make the doctor-patient relationship more digital, with updated medical reports in real time.
Wearing Technologies Integrate Man
The Apple Watch is one of the bets in wearable sector
5 projects of the Internet of Things y o u s h o u ld kno w Denox - www.denox.com.br Denox, based in Belo Horizonte, specializes in remote monitoring of people, security and automation. It created a security solution that combines home monitoring that associates the Internet of Things (IoT) with the network of friends and neighbors. SparkLabs - www.sparklabs.com The American SparkLabs makes a kit for the development of products of Internet of Things, Spark Core, and a platform that allows these devices to connect with each other, the Spark Cloud. Sensys - www.sensysnetworks.com Sensys was created in 2003 and specializes in sensor systems for traffic monitoring. It has generated an unprecedented uptake of data for transport agencies, using a low-cost wireless sensor solution. FitBit (Wearable) - www.fitbit.com The Californian startup FitBit has nearly 50% share of the wearable device market in the United States.The main product is the Fitbit Flex bracelet (smartband), which monitors the health of the user, generating data from the number of steps, distance, calories burned, and hours slept.It generates analysis such as the quality of sleep. BovControl - www.bovcontrol.com.br The Brazilian BovControl monitors livestock via sensors and also provides a data analysis system. About 40% of the business are already made outside Brazil.
With sensors that are coupled to the body and measure exercise performance, smart watches, and internet glasses, the human being becomes a member of the Internet of Things. Known as wearables, these extensions of computers to the human body are still looking for a product that really dominates the market (known as killer application). IDC itself estimates that by 2015, manufacturers will ship around 19 million wearable products, a low number compared to the billions of smartphones sold in 2013. But despite the fact that technology promotes the interconnection of machines, consumer desires must remain at the center of everything. In an exclusive interview to to Totvs Experience, from the headquarters in Mountain View, Vice President of Google, Vint Cerf, warns: “Companies that are not capable of adapting to this new paradigm of IoT will lose market share. Equipment manufacturers and also the applications will have to catch up with technology, the standards and customer preferences,” Cerf said. According to the consultancy Trend Watching, the Internet of Things revolution is not about just turning any appliance into connected or smart devices and forget the focus on the consumer. The challenge, says the consultancy, is what the consumer really needs and wants. “The world we envision for the next ten years is certainly fascinating and scary at the same time. I believe we are living a real perfect storm caused by the combination of the Internet of Things and sensors, Big Data, 3D printers, autonomous vehicles, drones, and mobile devices,” said Vicente Goetten, of Totvs Labs. If the feeling when reading this texct is that there will be an information overload with so many devices generating data with each other, keep calm. According to Mark Weiser, creator of the term “ubiquitous computing” - ubiquitous in daily life - as the machines come in human life and become an integral part of it, solving the problem of massive amounts of data will be easier. In classic article for Scientific American in which he defined the term in the early 90s, Weiser says that a walk in a forest generates much more information than a computer system.Nevertheless, “people feel the walk is relaxing and computers are frustrating.” For him, when the machines are part of the human environment - as in the world of the Internet of Things using a computer will be as refreshing as a walk in the forest.
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V i n t C e r f _ INTERVIEW Vinton Gray Cerf is Mathematician and informatician, also known as one of the internet pioneers, he is Google’s Vice President and “Chief Internet-Evangelist” since 2005. He spoke exclusively to Totvs Experience. Vinton believes that Internet of Things along with more intelligent machines, are going to generate a future of abundance and remark to the importance of of human creativity.
You said in a Conference that the Internet of Things will be a gigantic collaboration between networks and in terms of business, to participate in it will be certainly better than not to. In your opinion, how will this new scenario change the game for the industry: which kind of companies will lose market and which will gain? What will be the new arrangement of the chessboard? VC: From the appliance perspective, Internet-enabled devices will be attractive to the extent that their software can be easily updated and that they can report status remotely and accept remote commands. Companies that are not able to adapt their appliances to this paradigm will lose share. Commonality will be important (that is, all such devices need to be networked and subject to standard interfaces). Many of these appliances will be associated with services so that companies will have to go from makers of equipment to providers of service as well. Plainly, appliance makers and application makers (think of mobile apps, but not exclusively) will need to track technology, standards, and customer preferences. Standards will be important and successful companies will stay involved in standards development or at least close tracking. The Internet of Things will be possible only because of the IP protocol 6, which increases available IP addresses by several orders of magnitude and is safer and more stable. Is it possible to measure the explosion of the Internet of Things when the IPV6 be running at 100% capacity? VC: IPv6 provides a nearly limitless capacity to identify edge devices. The big challenge will be configuring large numbers of devices in homes, offices, industrial settings. Perhaps the makers of IPv6-enabled devices will be willing to report shipments as McDonald’s once did with its “20 billion hamburgers” reports! It is less clear whether it will be possible to measure the number of unique devices in use because many may operate locally behind firewalls.
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You said in a recent hangout that you’re excited with the possibilities of the Internet of things, but you also warned that there is a need for a big change in the way software is written. What are the main changes the computer science industry needs to do and how to move towards this? VC: Safety, confidentiality, and scaling are critical requirements. technology needs to demonstrate that it is resistant to attacks and various kinds of failures. Programmers will need to get into the habit of writing software that has demonstrable safety properties, strong authentication properties, and use of cryptography for confidentiality. Besides security, another barrier for the development of Internet of Things is the protocols’, communication patterns’, technical
standards’ war. The companies are creating some joint-ventures to defend their interests in the transition. Do you see this fight as a huge problem to the development of this market? How to minimize it? VC: This is a big problem. The Smart Grid Interoperability Panel initiative is an attempt to draw companies together to see the ad-
Companies that are not able to adapt its devices to this new paradigm of IoT will lose market share. Many of these appliances are associated with services”
headed to a more sustainable world, with more efficient processes, where the focus will be the consumer on demand needs? VC: Peter Diamandis’ notion of Abundance is applicable here. I think we can look forward to reducing costs through robotics and smarter machines, smart buildings, smart cities. However, we will still need a great deal of human ingenuity to design and build such systems. Mass customization, to use an old word, may be our future. *Totvs Experience note: In the Book “Abundance, the future is better than you think,” the founder of Singularity University Peter Diamandis preaches that due to technological progress in the areas of artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology and others, in the next two decades we will have higher earnings than in last two centuries.
vantage of common protocols and standards, but business incentives often interfere with the adoption of common standards. This is a challenge but I hope eventually, IPv6-based designs will prove to be most attractive. Google recently purchased Nest, focused on reinventing home devices, like thermostats and smoke alarms. Is this a sign that the company is betting on home IoT applications as a profitable field (perhaps the most) in this new market? VC: Google does not report on things it isn’t ready to make public. Plainly, the acquisition of NEST is in anticipation that IOT has a role to play in Google’s more general information mission. Device management, measurement, tracking, control, monitoring is all about information and information processing and this is core to Google’s interests. Some specialists say that human intelligence is becoming obsolete. The smart machines can simulate the human’s brain and take better decisions instead of us. How do you see the human role in this future of ultraintelligent machines? VC: I think this is an overly pessimistic position. These systems augment our ability to know things or to find things out (think about Google search). As devices have more information on which to base their actions, they will seem more intelligent, but we should not confuse computation with consciousness! Internet of Things will create unprecedented economic opportunities for businesses, individuals and countries. Do you think we are
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I N F O G R A P H I C 40
THEWORLDOFCONNECTEDTHINGS The IoT today
Internet OF THINGS = IoT
2014 Connected machines outshine US$
p c s a n d m o b ile
Connected devices (billion)
30 25
Machine to Machine
20 15
Tablets PCs/Laptops
10
Mobile hansets
0
Local network infrastructure 2020
2010
2014
Source: GSMA/Machina Research
7%
590
MO S T P R OM I S I N G
MARKETS
-3% +37%
(US$ 36 billion) Manufacturing / supply chains
+12%
Connected things
22%
Useful data for analysis
million
Connected electronics*
4,4
Digital universe
trillion
Connectable things
270
gigabytes
Connected automobiles*
million
Increased use of connected machines (Potential revenue with IoT in 2020)
Office equipment
Public services
trillion
of total
187 Billion
5
IoT Revenue
Electronics
+38%
(US$ 445 billion)
Automotive
+46%
(US$ 202 billion)
Smart buildings
Intelligent cities
+17%
+40% Health
+41%
(US$ 91 billion)
Source: GSMA/Machina Research
T
he Internet of Things refers to the interconnection of objects—machines, electronic devices, sensors—to the Internet. This new type of computing, the Industrial Internet, should propel a revolution in business and create broad opportunities for businessess.
...and tomorrow INternet OF THINGS
2020
BOOSTS BUSINESS
9 15%
US$
Opportunity leaders
trillion
4,2
35
+ Mexico
% OF
total
Russia
billion
212 Billion
Australia
44
China
trillion
Brazil
gigabytes
1,4
Billion
India Source: Cisco Source: IDC e GSMA * sold
on TI
More Intelligent
C i t ies
% overall benefits with the Internet of Thing
Annual global growth of the IT industry (today)
+4%
Key opportunities
IN BRAZIL 63 % Cities 22 % State 15 % Federal
Source: Cisco Consulting Services
Insurance (transport) HEALTH
Impact of IoT on IT companies (vendors until 2020)
+12%
Impact of IoT for IT users (buyers)
+8%
Entertainment Education (distance learning)
Source: IDC
O P I N I O N 42
S e g ment a tion
and Training Of People The search for expertise and efficiency in establishing a brand
I
f the core business of a company were management software, with a few related lines of business, what would its main challenges be? Given that technology is a means and not an end, the latest challenges faced by TOTVS are centered on segmentation of the software market, specialized training for people who must undertake this exceptionally diverse market, and management of mergers and adoption of new corporate cultures. Segmentation of the software market, in the case of TOTVS, brings together more than ten practice areas – education, construction and projects, health, retail, distribution & logistics, agribusiness, financial services, manufacturing, legal services – each with their own associated product. Dealing with this vast universe requires not only a deep understanding of the segments, but also increasing the training of professionals in development, support, commercial and customer services, among others. To begin with, we must invest in the specialization of professionals who deal, both directly and indirectly, with the segments. For this reason, the company has just signed a partnership with a major private educational group that operates nationally. This will allow intervening with the offerings (curricular programs) of the disciplines of computer science and systems analysis. Given that it is still being finalized, the partnership must be kept confidential. In addition to this, there is an understanding that
it is essential to engage in the key events of the segments, not only to present themselves but also to gather information, assess trends and, most importantly, listen to stakeholders. What one finds is that at one time, what was needed was just a good developer with strong knowledge of their segment that is capable of market and competitor analysis, comparing market share and projecting risks and opportunities for innovation, on top of this, they also need to know how to communicate and be masters at the jargon used in the field. In healthcare, for example, if the professional does not know what MCHAI (Management and Control of Hospital Acquired Infection) is, then possessing the other essentials does no good. Knowing general coding is not enough. It is vital to know coding in relation to the segment that is being addressed. For this reason, medical professionals are permanently part of the company’s health care team. It is the same for agronomists in agribusiness, engineers. They are the ones that aid interaction and delivery of the best solutions.
Collaborative Customers In addition to the well-known focus groups, customers are always invited to talk about the performance of the products, since being the users allows them to understand best how these can be improved. In this way, a real connection with customers, customization of solutions and the formation of closer relationships can be achieved. A successful example of this interaction between company and customers was a mobile solution for agribusiness, where the screen had to be clear with dark text, since the sun obscures the text if done in reverse. A developer wouldn’t have known this originally. It is a simple observation, but one that undoubtedly impacts on
From this internal social network arise other good ideas and indications of endogenous entrepreneurship. Several discussion communities are held in the areas of marketing, human relations, education, commercial, infrastructure and social support. They use polls, timelines and document uploads that are monitored daily for decision making and roadmaps and plan and communicate the future vision. Among the highlights of this online interaction is the discussion between technicians and customers, with the latter often anticipating the solution to their counterpart’s problems. The best thing about it is the drawing together of segments, which strengthens relationships and gains for all.
product quality and could even turn it unfeasible. Although TOTVS has a successful history, it continues to face other recurring challenges of interaction, competition, perception and monitoring of the technology market, which collide, among other variables, with crowdtest (software testing) and crowd development (collective development) proposals..
Plenty of Homework At TOTVS, the motto ‘develop what we believe in and practice what we develop’ is taken to an extreme inside and outside home. This company maxim, on top of being essential in the lives of clients, requires not only consistency, but also constant learning and excellent listening, both with the internal and external audiences. A reference to this is the internal social network, which put forward demands like a new dress code, which has been recently adopted, and working at home. As active participants in this network, the TOTVS team consists mostly of a contingent group of young innovators of Millennium generation, who dislike hierarchies and feel the need to express themselves and be unique, and appreciate technology and comfort. The adoption of a new dress code and homebased work thus made perfect sense. They are evidence of communication that is in a network and collaborative, using a technology platform, which aligns with the core business of the company. Again, doing your homework is very significant and revealing. It is a fact that a post on the internal social network has the power to engage and provoke change, promote action, and arouse a spirit of solidarity. It is thus a privileged space to expose yourself, share, and greatly reduce email communication. Although many managers
Up to date Topics like Design Thinking, Adaptive Learning, the Internet of Things and Big Data appear regularly on the agenda of any technology company and, in TOTVS’ case, it is no different. Topics include: addressing issues involving acquisition of information, knowledge analysis and solution proposals; the use of computers as interactive teaching devices; connecting the physical world to the digital world; or to handing a large volume of data, volatile or not, and with greater speed. These are not just concepts. They are transformed into something intelligent, both for TOTVS itself and for the market. The company has a great deal of managerial and strategic information and, therefore, it is essential to make smart associations from this data, like business performance initiatives in the areas of Business Analytics (BA) and GoodData. Ethical and governance issues affect their management. Therefore, security policies and identity management must be clean and updated. When a TOTVS manager admits that concern and dissatisfaction are inherent ingredients for overcoming problems, hitting targets and producing results are nothing but common factors in the business. What they are looking for are proposals of solutions with the brand DNA, which makes life simpler and easier for people. This is a very possible mission, but one must be apt. And, as Stephen Covey would say, “the technology will reinvent the business, but human relations will continue to be the key to success.”
remain with their doors open to talk about anything, the digital communication network really seems to be a strong ally in the company’s organizational management.
Gustavo Bastos is director of the construction and projects and education segments at Totvs
C O M P E T I T I V I N E S S 44
EducaTION and technology
SOUND PARTNERS Without minimizing the role of the classroom or the teacher, adaptive learning drives and facilitates learning by Denis Mizne
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here is a simple and frequently used metaphor that illustrates the urgent need for innovation in education: If a person from the 19th century landed today in an operating room or in an automobile plant, he would certainly have trouble not only recognizing the tools and instruments, but the procedures as well. But when it comes to schools, our visitor from the past would still find a familiar environment. With the exception one or two small changes, our classrooms are still similar to those found 100 years ago: the chairs arranged in rows, the teacher at the front of the class, and students paying attention (or not) in class. Despite being almost a cliché, this mental exercise is still effective to demonstrate a relevant problem: technology still isn’t offering the same results for education as it has for several other sectors of our society. And the traditional educational system is not demonstrating required learning. Currently, when completing basic education in Brazil– after nine years attending school – only 22 percent of Brazilian students know what they should about the Brazilian Language; the figure is 12% for math. In this scenario, one thing is certain: Brazil won’t make a fast and qualitative leap in education with only incremental changes. Innovation is what’s necessary.
throughout Brazil. Without technology, and with handwritten assessments, it is much more difficult for the teacher – almost impossible – to conduct constant analysis of learning and more personalized lesson planning. With this, a great myth is debunked: technology is not here to replace the teacher. On the contrary, it offers support so that the teacher can be devoted to guiding and facilitating learning, working closely with each student. As the debate advances in Brazil, the focus appears to be gradually moving in the right direction: from hardware to software, from the purchase of a tablet or notebook to concern of what is in inside of it. Again, this is technology as a means and not an end. In this sense, future generations’ ability to dominate the language increasingly appears in discussions about innovation and education. In some countries, such as England, learning programming already is part of the formal curriculum. In the USA, President Obama himself summoned the nation to learn to program, showing the importance of this domain in the country. In Brazil, free online tools to learn how to program, such as Codeacademy and Scratch, are already available in Portuguese. Although concrete experiments showing that technology can help engage students and facilitate learning and the work of teachers, it is still possible to find some resistance in regards to intensification and expansion of its use in education. Some people fear, for example, that technology will lead to a learning experience that lacks structure and turn the more traditional model of education upside down. This is another myth that needs to be tackled: technology is not intended to and should not eliminate the experience of what is learned in the classroom. It is to be added as a supplement to school and enhance the work of those who are teaching. Unlike our performance in other educational aspects, we are still relatively close to other countries when it comes to progress achieved with the use of technology in education. Making sure that Brazil does not get left behind in this regard as well will help us safeguard students’ rights to learn – regardless of their socioeconomic conditions or where they live.
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Technology has enormous potential to help education to overcome its major challenges, with the urgency required. Technology will not solve anything by itself and is not an end in itself. It is up to society and teachers to define what students learn, but technology can be a means to ensure that learning happens in a contemporary and effective way by providing autonomy to students to make their dreams come true. Technology is also an important ally when we think about gaining scale. In a country the size of a continent, with 55 million students and 2 million teachers in basic education, it is crucial. Innovations such as online learning platforms and applications can be used by millions of students at the same time. In addition to scale, the technology allows the student to learn at their own pace, in every day language and with varied types of content: videos, texts, games etc. At the Lemann Foundation, we truly believe in this strategy and we have a number of initiatives that are already being implemented in schools, using innovation and technology to enhance learning. An example is the Khan Academy, intelligent platform with more than 300,000 exercises and thousands of video classes, the world’s largest in math instruction. Each student has his/her profile – as in a social network – and their studies are tailored to their own difficulties and needs, with rewards in the form of points and medals. Therefore, the student follows an individualized path of learning and ensures he has understood and mastered every topic. Additionally, the teacher can see the performance of each student, in real time. With this kind of feedback, the teacher makes a support to be able to propose different activities for students who have more difficulty and for those who have already mastered the content. It is also possible to organize the class in groups or pairs of students in which who has already mastered a subject can help his or her classmate, among several other dynamics in the classroom. This frequently occurs with the 23,000 students who are already accessing the Khan Academy in public schools
Denis Mizne is the executive director of the Lemann Foundation. One of the main objectives of the institution is contributing to improved quality of instruction for Brazilian students and forming a network of transformative leaders.
LEARN MORE http://www.fundacaolemann.org.br
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engaGEment: the N a me of the G a me In order to retain talent and increase employee engagement, it’s necessary to understand what motivates the new generation of professionals by Carlos Vasconcellos illustration Daniel Razabone
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ong gone are the days when a student left university for a trainee program at a large company and continued at that company, vertically climbing the steps of his career until retirement age. This pattern of behavior is almost extinct and may become just a memory found in a museum of 20th century business practices. This is not only because the labor market and companies have changed, but also because professionals have changed. New generations live in a faster and more connected society, with aspirations that last century’s business model cannot satisfy. At the same time, in an increasingly agile and competitive market, the engagement level of the employees becomes a differentiator. “The main cost of a failure to engage is time,” says Larissa Moutinho, a coach certified by The Coaching Clinic. “As a company struggles to engage its employees, another is ready to win customers and increase profitability. There are also the costs of recruitment and selection, as well as knowledge, since with a high turnover rate, a company has employees constantly taking with them information about the company, which other professionals will take time to learn. Besides that, there is the risk of losing professionals to competitors, a scenario increasingly common in the current market.”
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GENERATION c o n f l i c t s “The new generation does not respect their elders, their knowledge, and thinks the world revolves around them.Do you know when this phrase was said for the first time?” Asks Paulo Alvarenga, managing partner of consulting company Crescimentum. “Most believe that it was in the 1970s or 1960s, but that phrase was found in an Egyptian inscription 4000 years before Christ,” he says. “As a matter of fact, the next generation will always be hard-working and drive organizations out of their comfort zone.” Alvarenga notes that today, in large corporations, up to four different generations interact in the same company. “We range from professionals with the kind of profile that receives and
Today’s young professionals want to enjoy the journey. The end-point became less important than the journey of getting there, adding value to a new word: purpose” However, if the name of the game is engagement, what can be done to increase the involvement of increasingly fickle professionals? Unlike post-war workers, who were shaped by a desire for stability that forged the structures and many of the rules of the corporate world, young professionals want to enjoy the journey, says Larissa. “With Generation X came the search for individualization and growth by meritocracy, giving rise to a race for differentiation,” she says. “Today’s young professionals want to enjoy the journey. The end-point became less important than the journey of getting there, adding value to a new word: purpose” explains Larissa. “Old-fashioned work, in which the same employee has to spend decades basically repeating the same steps, is simply unthinkable for this new generation.” In this sense, it is important to make use of the individual talents of each professional profile. “Make use of what each
executes missions, to those who are more questioning, challenging the status quo,” he says. In order to deal with this, Alvarenga believes that companies need to improve their communication. “Organizations in Brazil need to better manage expectations, making clear what is expected of these young professionals, who are thirsty for feedback,” he explains. According to Alvarenga, this culture can be taught. “We run full immersion programs to develop leaders with feedback from peers.” However, communication difficulties are not limited only to this in the Brazilian corporate environment. Among the country’s youth, there is a difficulty in handling criticism. “In the United States, constructive criticism is welcomed, but here it is still often seen as a personal attack,” Alvarenga says. “It is possible to implement a culture of giving feedback in the organization, but an open environment is needed in order to make this process work,” he concludes.
4 N e w Pro f essional Pro f iles Whether it is because of social networks or mobile technology, the labor market has changed. The specialized website Work Intelligently listed four new professional profiles of the 21st century. We are aware that nobody completely fits these clichés, but we’re sure that they are very common in the market. Always-on Millennial - They are seen as being the most experienced in technological and social media, but also perceived as being difficult to work with. Egocentric, narcissistic, and, for some, lazy. On-the-go Mobile Pro - The office is where they are. They work from multiple locations with multiple applications and mobile devices. They are rarely seen in the company, but when they are, they always have a tablet or smartphone in hand. Intrapreneur - They act with an entrepreneurial spirit within the company. They add surprising or unexpected value for their companies in a way that capitalizes new business opportunities. The Data Analytic - Viewed as introverts, these professionals see numbers, statistics and data as essential elements to the company. They are a valuable quality in the Information Age.
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A n t ô n i o M e n d o n ç a _ Interview The axis in the hunt for talent in the corporate world has changed and this phenomenon reaches all sectors of the economy, but is even more evident in the technology industry. “Increasingly, it is the talents that are choosing the companies and not the other way around,” says Antonio Mendonça, managing partner of consulting firm Russell Reynolds in Brazil, specialized in the field of Information Technology. “The new generations, starting from Generation Y, have high expectations regarding their career and want to work in environments with structures that are more casual, personalized and interactive.”
What has changed in the search for talent in the last ten years? Antônio Mendonça: Antonio Mendonça: Ten years ago, the best companies sought the best talents in the market. Today, I dare say it’s the opposite. The top talents choose where they want to work. There is an imbalance between supply and demand for labor, especially in the Brazilian market, in innovative areas such as software development, cyber security and data analytics. What factors can attract these professionals for technology companies? AM: Clearly, there has been a shift in attitude of new professionals. In order to respond to it, we need a more dynamic routine. The new generations want to work in environments with more flexible structures, ones that are more casual, personalized and interactive. This is not about a superficial change. I did consulting for a firm that wanted to become more digital, but the chair-
man did not use e-mail. Thus, it is not enough to simply mimic the casualness and leisure area that Google has if you do not have the correct corporate culture and attract the right people for the organization. And what do these “right people” want? AM: Professionals who give the best return of investment for the company are not enticed simply by money, although that is an important factor. They want a company that is in line with their psychological, social and even ideological stances. They want the social connections that the organization can provide. From the point of view of the technology sector, it is also important that, as an attraction factor, firms be embedded in an innovative ecosystem, as in Silicon Valley, where a supply chain exists that feeds back the innovation. In Brazil, where ecosystems as developed as this do not exist, the companies must be at least close to the main research centers in the country. But it has not been just the attitude of the professionals that changed. The labor market has also undergone major changes in recent decades. AM: Yes. In the past, a young person had few professional options: law, engineering, business administration, medicine, journalism. Today, the list is considerably greater: social network management, waste management, sustainability, game design. A high-level course for the training of chefs is a respectable alternative, both in career and in life. In addition to this, professionals are increasingly faced with a market that has no boundaries. The labor market is the world. Especially for those who work with innovation.. How can we follow this process and understand what young professionals in these companies think and feel? AM: It’s not that traditional tools have become obsolete, but alone they are insufficient to keep up with the speed of change. Before, a climate survey took a year to complete. Nowadays, you can practically track it in real time, through management softwares like those of TOTVS. It is not enough to keep up these climate changes. You need to understand them and act quickly so the company remains attractive.
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professional does best and help each profile to develop new skills and minimize their weaknesses. If a person is experienced and copes well with technology and social media, for example, take advantage of that,” says Larissa. “If he values freedom offered by mobile technologies, do not try to imprison him in the structure of the organization and seek to manage deadlines and targets instead.” Ylana Miller, managing partner of Yluminarh and professor at IBMEC-RJ, in turn, believes that attributes of the contemporary professionals do not rely as much on their generation, but on their individual characteristics. “You have to understand each person’s motives, so you can engage them in the organization,” she says. “An important question is why he or she chose my professional organization. Once I understand what they want, I can design programs to retain them.“ For Ylana, each organization must find its own way to engage its employees, instead of following pre-made formulas. “Using as a benchmark best practices in the human resources market is good for opening your mind, but you cannot just transplant your neighbor’s practices and think they will work,” she argues. “Your people management practices must be focused on the organization’s strategy, that is, one must feel the
Choosing the professional with the correct profile facilitates engagement and avoids waste of time, money and productivity” DNA of his company, what it needs, and the professional profile that meets those specific demands.” Career plans, therefore, should seek to account for these personal characteristics. “It is vital to properly assess the potential of who you are hiring, to see if that person’s interests are aligned with the culture and needs of the company, so the employee has a chance to develop,” says Ylana. In practice, this means that if growth opportunities are only vertical, the company can demotivate their talents. “If you promote a technician to team leader, it is possible that a good technician will be lost without the gain of a good leader”, she says. Alexandre Kalman, a partner at Hound Recruitment, adds: “The career plan should be both challenging and achievable, in order to achieve engagement.” He also draws attention to the care that must be taken at the time of selection. Choosing a person with the
HOW MUCH DOES LACK OF COMMITMENT COST? A failure to engage workers is costly not only for companies, but for the economy and society as well. The State of the American Workplace survey, by the Gallup Institute, points out that only 30% of employees are actively engaged in their workplaces. Among the rest, 50% say they’re just passing time in the company and another 20% express their discontent by negatively influencing their colleagues, providing services that are low quality and missing work. According to Gallup, the “active disengagement” of this 20% has an annual cost of US$ 450 billion to US$ 550 billion to the American economy. The impact is felt directly in the balance sheet of companies in which engagement is lowest. According to the survey, companies that had a ratio of 9.3 engaged employees for every 1 employee with negative commitment had a profit-per-share that was 147% larger than their competitors in the period between 2011 and 2012. In comparison, the companies investigated that had 2.6 engaged employees for every 1 employee with
negative commitment had a profit-per-share that was 2% lower than their competitors in the same period. The Gallup survey points out the leadership roles in the company are key to overcoming the barrier of engagement. According to the Institute, managers that focus on the skills and strengths of their team can virtually eliminate active disengagement, which would double the national average of engagement of these employers. Research also indicates that generations nearing the end of their career are more engaged, while the so-called Millennials (born between the mid 1980s and the first half of the 1990s), are more likely to change jobs in the next 12 months if the labor market grows. The survey also showed that on average, women are slightly more engaged than men, and that employees with higher education are more likely to have positive experiences and engage at work than colleagues without a diploma.
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W.Chan Kim and Renée Maugborne, from the Insead business school in Paris, are the creators of Blue Ocean Strategy. This strategic model is based on the creation of new market niches, “blue oceans”, which are virgin and unexplored spaces, where the corporation could exercise their leadership alone, making competitors irrelevant. Now, Kim and Maugborne propose the application of their strategy to leaders in the company, so they can release – quickly and at a low cost – the untapped talents and energies for their organizations. According to them, leadership within a company should be seen as a service. The company’s professionals can choose to buy this service or not. The idea is to apply the Blue Ocean Strategy to convert these non-customers (disengaged) into customers (engaged). The first step is to focus more on the activities and actions that leaders can implement to create motivation, not the leader’s profile. Of course the values and the character of the leader matter—a lot—, but these are difficult things to change. On the other hand, anyone can change their activities if proper advice is given. From this logic, it is possible to evaluate the activities that are cold spot (time-consuming to the leaders without adding value) or hot spot (that energize employees and inspire the use talents that are underused or ignored by the leaders). Observing the reality of the company’s leaders and mapping their needs is the key to effective change. Another important aspect is the distribution of leadership across all levels of the
correct profile facilitates engagement and prevents loss of time, money and productivity. “The company has to know what they want from the new employee, and this should be aligned with the expectations of whoever is hired, in order for the alliance to be perfect. An error of judgment is very expensive, especially when talking about leadership roles.” Kalman recalls that in 2008, the Brazilian economy experienced a period of intense growth, with a large number of contracts in the corporate market. “Then we saw many companies recruiting with no regard for professional profiles, but only technical ability,” he says. The outcome? “Many people who were
L E A D E R S H I P organization. This is critical for the company’s performance, as senior leaders cannot closely evaluate the actions of managers and those in the front-line. The second step for the Blue Ocean Leadership, Kim and Maugborne say, is developing alternative leadership profiles. To do this, leaders are invited to think outside company boundaries for examples that add value to the leadership there, including personal experiences or family. At the same time, cold spot activities are included in a list of activities to be reduced or eliminated, while hot spot activities should be magnified if they are already practiced, or created if not already part of the leaders’ routines. The outcome of this work at various levels of leadership is presented to employees, who give their feedback. From there, the top management will develop new leadership profiles for the future of the organization, which will be institutionalized. It is important to note that, although senior leaders have the final word, all leadership levels should vote on the definition of these profiles so that the model can yield results, Kim and Maugborne highlight. According to the researchers, the application of the Blue Leadership principles in a British company has resulted in a turnover reduction of its 10,000 employees from 40% to 11% in just one year. With this, it was possible to reduce the cost of recruitment and training by half. The total savings—including reduced absenteeism—reached US$ 50 million. Moreover, the level of customer satisfaction rose by 20% and internal climate surveys showed a considerable reduction in stress, as well as greater staff engagement.
hired at that time left or were asked to leave, which came at a great cost to the organization and the career of these employees. This caused many Brazilian companies rethink their human resource strategies, to include more personal matters in their selection processes.”
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Gallup: ht tp: //migre.me/mr 9n4
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Volunteering A way to find the meaning of work by Andréa de Lima
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he search for a better world, for meaning, and happiness does not just involve the personal sphere or involvement in social causes. Both in private life and in the professional world, what once involved classic volunteering, anchored in American-style philanthropy of helping others, has a new look. This look relates to entrepreneurship, especially for the Millennium Generation, where the division between what is public and private has been blurred. It is no wonder then that companies and local and international organizations believe in this version of the entrepreneur volunteer. Among them, Junior Achievement, Endeavour, AIESEC, and Bliive stand out. Another initiative adopted by individuals and organizations, particularly in the business world, such as in engineering and contemporary design, is design thinking. It’s influence has spread into diverse disciplines as a way to address and
It is important that IOS does not depend exclusively on TOTVS, so it can expand its social benefits” Sergio Serio Filho, Executive of Institutional Relations of TOTVS
solve problems. Successful entrepreneurs and heads of startups take on volunteering with endless energy, are willing to learn from their mistakes and to try again when the desired result is not immediately achieved.
Exporting Talent The social entrepreneur Lorrana Scarpioni says: “I thought a great deal of resources were needed to be an entrepreneur”. However, she now believes that there is a more humane and sustainable alternative to gain experiences, knowledge and collaboration. Influenced by documentaries on the creative economy and online collaboration, she decided in May 2012 to create Bliive, a collaborative social network for time exchange. Through this digital platform, which brings together 40,000 users in 78 countries, people may, for example, offer a one-hour Spanish class and earn a credit than can be exchanged for any hour-long activity available there. Just 23 years old, with a degree in public relations and law, she is part of the network of young leaders in the Global Shapers Community, a World Economic Forum initiative, and has just been nominated for the MIT Technology Review’s List of Innovators under 35. A volunteer since age 12 in her native city of Curitiba, Lorrana says that when she was 14 years old she taught sex education and prevention in public schools on the outskirts of the capital of Paraná through the Menarca Project. For this, she received a UNESCO award. “I’ve always been very restless and was a leader in high school. I wanted to make things happen. That’s part of my personality. I go and I do it,” says the young person who before 2012 was not even familiar with the concept of social business or startup, and the income and positive social impact that can be generated. “I had that experience in Aiesec, one of the largest student organizations in the world for leadership development. After six months of planning, in partnership with three other professionals and a programmer, I was the only one who was remunerated since the beginning. I launched Bliive” says the entrepreneur, who was selected with three other partners for the Sirius Acceleration Program at the University of Glasgow (Scotland), where she has been living since May. The program continues until mid-2015. “I brought the possibility of expansion of Bliive to the European market, where we want to operate simultaneously with the Brazil team, as soon as we raise funds. It takes a bit of hu-
TOTVS works with its corporate social responsibility arm, IOS. Bliive is a social network for collaborative exchange
mility to recognize that it’s not enough to have a million dollars if you don’t know what to do with it. We must learn from each mistake. The problem is not making mistakes, but not learning from them. You need to start doing, prototyping, to make mistakes quickly, and then, solve them quickly, and of course, enjoy the journey,” she concludes. Even with strong pressure for self-financing, financial sustainability and financing of new initiatives, surrounded by layers
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of bureaucracy to make then reality, the entrepreneurship volunteer is able to simulate extremely dynamic conditions in an emerging economy and foster an entrepreneurial spirit capable of producing sustainable results. These are the new entrepreneurs, or the design thinkers. For Sarah Stein Greenberg, director of the d.school at Stanford University, competencies in design thinking are the base to find hidden patterns and find something real and actionable in an uncertain environment. “This is a very good definition of entrepreneurship.
Core Business Pulsates in the Social Arm TOTVS also takes part in the evolution from social action and classic social investment to strategic social investment. The company has a corporate social responsibility branch called the Institute of Social Opportunity (IOS, acronym in Portuguese). Founded 16 years ago by volunteers from the company, with the purpose of empowering youth in public schools and people with disabilities to the labor market, IOS’ mission is “to seek, support and monitor the employability of young people
Released in the US in 2008, the most recent book by John Elkington – who coined the term triple bottom line – in collaboration with Pamela Hartigan, “Empreendedores Sociais: o exemplo incomum das pessoas que estão transformando o mundo” (“Social Entrepreneurs. The Uncommon Example of People that Are Changing the World” http://www.amazon.com.br/Power-Unreasonable-People-Entrepreneurs-Leadership-ebook/ dp/B0044X V706/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1403898987&sr=8-1&keywords=john+elkington), by Campus-Elsevier, shows the role of social entrepreneurs in improving modern business management and how these individuals are similar to those professionals interested in profit.
and people with disabilities that are having less access to opportunities in the labor market”. It is important to remember that this movement began earlier in 1997 from a voluntary action on former Microsiga. Training for work and development of people, especially in the tech sector gave birth to the Microsiga Institute. In 2006, Microsiga began to be called TOTVS, the Institute of Social Opportunity was born as a legal entity and an independent association. TOTVS concentrates its actions and resources of private social investment in IOS. Maisa Signor, Head of Institutional Relations of the IOS, says that in 2008 the organization’s mission was updated. Job training evolved into effective employability of the target au-
Today, entrepreneurship and innovation are converging issues, both individually and collectively. And in the end, it’s a win-win situation, both inside and outside the company walls” Daniela Cabral, Managing Executive of Human Relationships of Totvs
dience, young people from 15- 24 years, students from the public school system, preferably low income and disabled. “We work on issues such as inclusion, and have expanded the scope of jobs beyond the technology sector and company size. We aim for training manpower for the market, changing lives, generating income, and professional achievement, with a deep look at human development, extolling the role of leadership”. Acting on three fronts – mentoring, lectures/ courses (which includes tips on the market), and the young volunteer-the IOS has the capacity to serve 2,000 young people per year. Since 1998, 26,000 young people have been served in 26 communities. In the last five years, 71% of those were employed. Serio Sergio Filho, Executive of Institutional Relations of TOTVS, certifies that the IOS is directly connected to the core business of the company. “TOTVS considers it important that the IOS has a non-exclusive reliance on the company, allowing other companies to invest in its training model and expand the social benefits of the Institute,” says Sergio, who has been working at TOTVS for nine years and is also responsible for area of social opportunity of the company. The executive says that IOS’ big differential is counting on TOTVS’ whole structure and support – the company gives the Institute licenses of its solutions in management software for training purposes. “Additionally, TOTVS encourages its affiliates and franchisees to adopt an IOS training system. This way, the Institute is an influencer in the cities of Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, Uberlândia, Pouso Alegre, Curitiba, Joinville, and Cuiabá, beyond the IOS’ core in São Paulo,” he explains. The Institute also has the support of colleges, universities, and other social
organizations to maintain its structure. TOTVS’ investment closes an important cycle for the company, working with know-how at the service of social purposes. After all, students learn the practical operation of the administrative work in various departments of companies, all thanks to the knowledge gained by the implementation of TOTVS software. Maisa Signor concludes: “The Institute is a case of strategic social investment, demonstrating that corporate social responsibility for TOTVS is an essential pillar for the future of its operation: IOS enables manpower to use TOTVS technology, contributing to the company’s sustainability.” Besides the institutional support of the company, TOTVS’ employees are encouraged to work as volunteers on IOS through three fronts: mentoring young people, guiding students on their professional footsteps and studies; lectures focused on topics such as behavior, citizenship, career and technology; technical courses (programming language and advanced Office, for example). With that, former IOS students now work in large companies like Fundepag, Balaska, and VeriSign, among others. Even in corporate volunteerism, the work focus is always on people. What one finds is that the motto of the need for a greater purpose breaks the barrier of personal achievement, expanding into the realm of corporate strategic planning. “Today, entrepreneurship and innovation are converging themes, both individually and collectively. In the end, there are only winners, inside and outside the company walls,” says Daniela Cabral, Executive of Human Relations at TOTVS. The numbers evidence the success of the Institute: on average, 70% of those approved are hired after the end of the course, in positions ranging from apprentices and trainees to permanent positions – an average of 700 new jobs per year. Since its founding, the more than 25,000 students have graduated from IOS.
LEARN MORE http://www.jabrasil.org.br http://www.endeavor.org.br http://www.aiesec.org.br http://bliive.com
http://dschool.stanford.edu http://www.voluntariado.org.br http://www.ios.org.br http://www.techo.org/paises/ brasil/teto/o-que-e-teto/
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The Catholic Educational Center of Brasilia is integrated by a TOTVS solution
I Vitor Gontijo
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The Ari de Sá School, in Ceará, and the Brazilian Association for Education and Culture streamline processes and show increased integration with TOTVS solutions for educational institutions by Flávia Dratovsky
ntegration of operations, more precise information, agile processes, better communication, and focus on the core business. There are many benefits observed by companies that adopt the TOTVS solutions for the education sector. Ari de Sá, in Ceará, and the Brazilian Association for Education and Culture (União Brasiliense de Educação e Cultura - UBEC), which run educational institutions in four states, are among the partners with successful experiences. An educational institution for preschool, primary, and high school levels with four locations in Fortaleza, Ari de Sá integrated its financial and academic operations with TOTVS solutions and the gains were significant. The technology streamlined the school’s key processes and brought more precision to decision-making. With approximately nine thousand students in total, the school implemented TOTVS educational solutions starting in 2009. They substituted tasks that were previously completed manually – such as enrollment, reenrollment, and releasing of grades – and decreased execution time. “Our biggest shortfall was in our academic processes, mainly when the teachers released grades. Before, grades were registered on a paper chart, scanned, and inserted into the system. Today,
teachers release grades directly on the school’s portal, through TOTVS Content Management, which streamlined the process and avoids rework,” says Andrey Lima Barbosa, IT Manager at Ari de Sá. The institution was one of the pioneers in the use of the TOTVS solution for the realm of education. The technology integrated the accounting and fiscal departments with the scholastic. “We realized, already in 2009, the future of the tool, by the degree of integration with the financial aspect, accounting, educational content, and our faculty. The TOTVS solution offered a very concrete possibility of growth and consolidation,” explains Andrey. For the IT Manager, this integration is one of the differentials of the system. “With the centralization of data, we begin to work with more assertive information and extract reports with more ease, offering better support for the Directors to make their decisions based on different scenarios,” he says. For him, the biggest challenge was to actually introduce the technology into the day-to-day of the school. The visualization of grades by the students and the communication between them, the teachers, and the institution were some of the difficulties faced by Ari de Sá. The implementation of the TOTVS Educational Portal had the role of bringing the parents closer to the school officials. Through the portal, it is possible to monitor the entire scholastic life of the student, check financial statements, and submit requests to the secretary.
The package of solutions also allowed the IT team to become more aligned with the needs of the business. “The TOTVS tools and personalized service of the Fortaleza franchise helped us to reposition the IT team within the company. Today we do not limit ourselves to solving matters of technological infrastructure: we participate in the decision-making and contribute to increase the value of our business,” explains Andrey. In addition to the educational software and the Student Portal, Ari de Sá implemented solutions for Academic Management, Recruitment Process, E-learning, Financial Management, Purchase Management and Stock Management. The processes of the institution’s library are also managed by the company’s technology. And the partnership still has a lot of growing to do: in 2015, Ari de Sá University will be inaugurated, which will also rely on TOTVS solutions for university instruction.
UBEC Integrates Locations in Different States Integrating geographical and administrative differences was one of the challenges for the IT team at the Brazilian Association for Education and Culture. Manager of eight schools distributed throughout the Federal District, Minas Gerais, Tocantins, and Goiás, UBEC sought to transcend physical distance and the diver-
The TOTVS tools helped us reposition our IT sector. Today, we participate in decision-making.” Andrey Lima Barbosa, IT Manager at Ari de Sá School
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Ari de Sá School is a partner of TOTVS at its four locations
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sity of the business to centralize information and decisions. In the process, TOTVS solutions were fundamental. “UBEC starts with preschool and goes through university level, and it is one of the few institutions in the country that offers a preschool course as well as a doctorate. As such, we have a very large range of needs,” explains Leonardo Nunes Ferreira, Executive Director of UBEC. With 8,000 employees in total, the group consists of the Catholic University of Brasilia and the Catholic Educational Center of Brasilia; the University Center of East Minas Gerais (Unileste), Padre de Man School and the Catholic Educational Center of East Minas (CECMG); the Catholic College of Tocantins and the Ubec-Centaf location, focused on technical courses in agribusiness, in Goiás. In addition, it also has a Shared Services Center in Brasilia. The objective of adopting TOTVS solutions was to establish a central database for the entire group. The partnership began in 2008, with the implementation of the administrative and financial modules of the company. “We opted for a gradual implementation, starting with the smaller locations until we reached the larger ones. In that way, it was easier to test the processes and correct potential problems. The entire process was monitored by the TOTVS team, in a very close partnership. We reevaluated our processes to adapt them within the best practices of the TOTVS system, and, on the other hand, the company also did the very important work of understanding the larger demands of the UBEC,” the Director notes. In 2010, the implementation of the ClassisNet education system began at the group’s institutions. The cycle was completed in 2012, with the arrival of the platform at the largest location, the Catholic University of Brasilia. “Besides the solutions in the educational realm, when CSC was implemented we also implemented the Protheus system, for customer service, and Fluig ECM,” says Leonardo Nunes. The adoption of TOTVS solutions unified processes, improved access of information, and increased the reliability of the data. This allowed them to to track the performance of the institution in a detailed and efficient manner, in the academic and pedagogical aspects, as well as the administrative. “We gained velocity in decision-making, connectivity, and security and consistency of the data. Now, throughout the decision-making process, assertiveness is much greater,” he explains. With the data system, it is possible to map, for example, how the students have been recruited – how many are from
Anderson Brasil
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The Catholic Educational Center of Brasilia is one of the locations the UBEC runs in three states and the Federal District
programs like ProUni, transfers from other institutions or selected by the University – and plan activities in accordance with this profile. The pace of renewed enrollment by semester is another data point that can be tracked daily. “With this information, we can contact a certain location to alert that the pace of reenrollment is slow and there is a need to start a campaign to mobilize the students. In summary, the TOTVS system allows us to have much more control over the business,” says Nunes. With the platform already consolidated amongst employees – UBEC relies on an internal IT team specialized in TOTVS solutions, divided into administrative support and academic management. The next step in the partnership will be to increase the interfaces offered to the students, in spaces such as the Educational Portal. “At first, our work was getting the house in order, to later offer services for parents and students. It is in this stage that we are preparing for next year,” says the Executive Director.
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