Ahmed AlAnsari's Blog

Farmsent and DePIN: Transforming Agriculture and Consumer Trust

We are celebrating 14 years since the emergence of Bitcoin, a technology that was, and still is, often dismissed as a scam or bubble despite its increasing value as an investment asset, now standing at a market capitalization of $1.3 trillion. This technology has reshaped decentralization and served as a foundational block for all the Web3 innovations we see today. Yet, many people remain ignorant or skeptical, viewing the space through a narrow lens that focuses on current use cases instead of understanding the potential these technologies have to reshape the future.

In this article, we will tackle one important segment within the Web3 space: DePIN, which stands for Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network. This segment deals with decentralized networks used to manage and operate physical infrastructure. The approach aims to create more efficient, secure, and resilient infrastructure systems by leveraging the principles of decentralization and Blockchain technology. From data storage, render farms, and energy management to massive IoT data exchange and connectivity, this sector can be the building block for how average people will notice the power of Web3 technologies as it effects their lifestyle directly.

Recently, I had a call with Yog Shrusti, the founder of Farmsent, a decentralized infrastructure platform that aims to assist:

Farmers by maximizing their benefits, eliminating most middlemen, and securing their funds and profitability.Suppliers by enabling them to manage and permanently record their order books, transactions, and supply chain.Consumers by providing live, immutable traceability data of the fruits and vegetables they consume, from the day they are planted to the time they reach the supermarket next door.

Farmsent is an excellent example of how innovative and useful a DePIN segment can be. Many farmers around the world struggle to sell their yields at a decent price due to the involvement of multiple middlemen, which results in them receiving the bare minimum price. With the Farmsent platform, farmers can sell directly to clients worldwide, maximizing their profits. The blockchain records and traces the entire process, eliminating fraud, manipulation, and errors. This is a life-saving solution for farmers who can no longer afford their expenses or lack the necessary experience to manage and market their yields.

On the other end, consumers have struggled with misinformation throughout their lives, with no mechanism to verify what is true or legitimate. People get poisoned due to incorrect expiration dates, receive fake goods with false origins, or, even worse, encounter products with the wrong ingredients from unknown suppliers. This issue became evident to me when I used an online app to buy fruits from a grocery shop. The shop did not specify whether the fruits were local or imported, I didn’t make a purchase because certain goods are not advisable from certain sources, or as a consumer, I might prefer local vegetables, Indian mangoes or Australian berries. A fully public traceability system can improve credibility and trust, providing consumers with complete information from how the seeds were planted to the entire process and time it took to arrive at our doorstep.

We can see how Farmsent is a noble service for a noble cause. In fact, the platform is completely free to use and will be open source, allowing developers to utilize it as infrastructure and build more innovative solutions.  Yog and his team have already on-boarded 160,000 farmers from Indonesia as part of its beta testing.

One of the most interesting aspects of the Web3 space is how community, collaborations, and partnerships serve as core elements of mutual success. In the case of Farmsent, they have partnered with Peaq Network to use their tailored DePIN chain for storage and records. They have also teamed up with NuklAI to assess and categorize all the data, providing relevant information and insights. Recently, they partnered with Chirp to create standards that other developers can use to communicate with the platform.

All these projects are DePIN initiatives that work hand in hand to deliver a comprehensive solution. It’s a modular ecosystem in which everyone can participate and derive substantial value.

The post Farmsent and DePIN: Transforming Agriculture and Consumer Trust appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Breaking Free from Dependency: Exploring 3 Cognitive Biases That Limits Our Options

Recently, one of my twitter accounts was suspended and I have received the following violation message “You may not use Twitter’s services in a manner intended to artificially amplify or suppress information or engage in behavior that manipulates or disrupts people’s experience on Twitter”.

The thing is I have been using this account for over a few months now mainly for engaging with my crypto projects and friends. In fact, the account is connected to many web3 platforms that will negatively affect my activities and portfolio if the suspension took a longer period of time.

One of the main reasons why decentralization is becoming increasingly popular in the realm of innovation is because there are always limitations on what we can say or do. While we have some freedom to access and share information, we often lack full control and rights over that information, especially when we use different platforms or go through different institutions.

Another significant issue is the ownership of data, where a small number of companies collect people’s data and either use it or sell it for profit, often without people realizing their data has been taken from them. To be clear, I am not against having laws and regulations or monitoring what is posted because some stuff is inappropriate for children while others may be harmful or offensive. 

However, I am completely opposed to not being truthful with my own audience and to having double standards. The preceding paragraph does not clarify anything specific, and to be honest, I still don’t know what I violated! Is it against Twitter’s usage rules to support or engage with web3 projects, or is it simply a matter of rephrasing terms and phrases to place people in specific categories and suspend them because they do not follow our wishes?

Fortunately, in the Twitter scenario, I have other accounts that will help me to mitigate the risk. However, it will undoubtedly have an influence on some of the projects I am engaged with, given the Web3 space relies heavily on Twitter and Discord for the majority of its operations.

A similar case was mentioned clearly in my recent book, The Brand Dependence Model: Identify & Mitigate Your Danger Blocks, where an influencer on a platform such as Instagram spent tremendous amount of time and effort to build a decent loyal community to find out that Instagram have changed their algorithm which will affect all of his hard work in the past few years. This highlight a common tendency to overlook important variables that can impact our personal brands or goals.

While we can simply blame Twitter or Instagram for their unethical strategies, we shouldn’t stop blaming ourselves for not having contingency plans for our important activities and actions.

We often become dependent on a single platform or strategy without fully realizing the potential risks and consequences it poses in the long run. I’m very interested to tackle the behavioral side of this case. In these situations, several cognitive biases come into play, influencing our decision-making processes and habits. Let us go through few of the most obvious biases that affects us, especially in the context of the scenarios above.

Availability Heuristic Bias

The availability heuristic bias leads us to rely on readily available information when making judgments or decisions. In the twitter context, one could heavily depend on the success and visibility they had achieved on Twitter, overlooking the potential risks associated with depending solely on that platform. Similarly, the Instagram influencer overlooked the possibility that the algorithm could change, affecting their hard-earned community. Understanding this bias allows people to be more cautious about drawing conclusions based entirely on readily available experiences or information in their memory. They can actively seek out additional information, evaluate alternative perspectives, and make more balanced and educated decisions.

Omission Bias

Another relevant bias is the omission bias, where inaction or maintaining the status quo is perceived as less risky or preferable. We may underestimate the risks of not diversifying our online presence or exploring alternative channels for our business or efforts. This bias can prevent us from taking proactive measures to mitigate potential dangers. Understanding this bias allows individuals to more objectively examine the potential consequences of both action and inaction. It encourages people to consider the potential effects of failing to act in specific situations, minimizing the risk of biased decision-making that favors inaction.

Loss Aversion

Loss aversion bias also plays a role. It leads us to strongly prefer avoiding losses rather than acquiring gains. We become averse to the idea of diversifying our online presence or exploring other platforms due to the fear of losing the audience, reputation, or progress we have achieved on a particular platform. Recognizing this bias encourages people to critically evaluate their own risk tolerance as well as potential biases that may develop from an excessive fear of losses. It helps people to make more reasonable decisions by taking into account prospective profits as well as losses and assessing options based on their whole projected worth rather than just avoiding losses.

To address these biases and reduce the impact on our brands or goals, the Brand Dependence Model Book provides a simple but effective model to pinpoint our overlooked dependence variables and identify & mitigate the most severe variable that impacts our brands/goals utilizing a straightforward risk assessment framework.

It is essential to develop proactive habits. We need to consider potential risks, evaluate the long-term sustainability of relying on a single platform, and actively explore alternative strategies to safeguard our activities. Building contingency plans, diversifying our online presence, and continuously monitoring industry trends can help us adapt and minimize the negative consequences of relying too heavily on a single option.

While external factors may contribute to the challenges we face, it is important to hold ourselves accountable and develop habits that promote resilience and adaptability. By being aware of these biases and actively seeking ways to overcome them, we can navigate the ever-evolving digital landscape more effectively and protect our personal brands and goals.

The post Breaking Free from Dependency: Exploring 3 Cognitive Biases That Limits Our Options appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Bridging the Gap Between Intention and Action: The Importance of Understanding Our Emotions and Biases

If you have read my recent book, The Brand Dependence Model: Identify and Mitigate Your Danger Blocks, you would have come across the second part, which discusses the basics of behavioral economics and how our different biases and heuristics contribute dramatically to our daily behaviors and decisions.

In this article, I will introduce a critical subject from my upcoming book which is based on my article titled “Rebranding our Mindset” that was published in the Middle East Business Magazine & News.

Have you ever intended to accomplish something and then failed to achieve it? It’s really common, right? Imagine an individual intends to eat healthy food but ends up ordering fast food for lunch every day. Despite their intention to eat healthy, the convenience of fast food and their busy schedule prevents them from making healthier food choices.

Or a person intends to save money and sets a budget but ends up overspending every month. The intention to save is not reflected in their behavior due to impulsive purchases and a lack of self-control when it comes to spending.

As we can see from the examples above, there is an obvious gap between what we intend and what we actually achieve. This effect in behavioral science is known as the Intention-Action Gap.

To put it simply, the Intention-Action Gap is a cognitive bias that explains the gap between what we plan to do and whether or not we actually do it. It’s the study of how information is processed by people and how context effects their behavior responses. As you can see, it has a lot to do with how we experience and form our habits.

This is one of the most explored biases in behavioral science because to its enormous influence on a wide range of areas including technological adaption, environmental change, health and well-being, and policy and legislation.

In order to grasp the importance of this bias, it is necessary to delve into the core concepts of behavioral science. One of these concepts is the fact that individuals are often unaware of their true motives. This idea can be summarized succinctly with a quote by David Ogilvy, who said “Consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.”

Consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say.

David Ogilvy

This statement holds true even if we replace “consumers” with “people,” as consumers are, after all, people themselves. Given that individuals may be biased towards what they believe and feel, or what they say and do, it raises the question of how traditional surveys and focus groups, which have been used for decades, can still be effective. Why do governments, institutions, and businesses continue to spend billions of dollars each year asking people what they think, like, feel, and prefer?

The answer to this question is even more surprising, as many people would argue that either better research tools are not available, or that certain techniques and models that have been used for decades are still effective. However, this leaves a big question mark on the reliability and accuracy of such research methods. The truth is that while traditional research techniques may have worked in the past, they are not always effective in capturing the complex and often unconscious thought processes that shape human behavior.

According to neoclassical economics, if you value something and have sufficient information about it, your conduct should reflect your choice. In reality, you can’t judge or evaluate someone based on their actions because they may not be operating in accordance with their intentions or motives.

This is due to other biases that we have, such as the Status Quo Bias, the tendency for people to prefer things to stay the same by default, even if changing them could be beneficial, Information Bias, which is the tendency to seek knowledge that is irrelevant to the topic at hand, and Ostrich Bias, the tendency to avoid or refuse harmful and unfavorable information, much like an ostrich does when it is terrified and buries its head in the sand.

So what does those biases has to do with the gap between our intention to do something and the action of doing it? Believe it or not, it has a lot of connection. If we don’t understand our biases then we will fall within those cognitive traps over and over again. In reality, this is what makes marketing efficient as the majority of people do not want to acknowledge that they are biased, which makes them easily vulnerable.

So If you want to lose weight in the next month and experience information bias, you will most likely listen to too many people and read too many books and articles, resulting in verity of different perceptive and too much irrelevant information that will lead you to quit the entire effort.

This is referred to as the “too much information” (TMI) Effect. A state in which having too much data causes great cognitive effort, which discourages you from moving further.

How many times have you given up on a certain activity or action after getting through so much needless information? It happens all the time. From the other side how many times you failed hitting a certain goal or target only because you avoided information that you don’t like or afraid of? Moreover, how many times that you didn’t do the action because you were afraid to get out from your comfort zone or head towards a change that might have certain risk associated with it?

Researchers have revealed that most adults know exercise is healthy for them and would like to do more of it, yet global surveys reveal that between 36% and 55% of individuals never manage to turn their intentions into action. Obviously, perception dose not correlate with expectation!

Another key aspect that leads to the gap between our intentions and actions is Procrastination. The desire to postpone and leave activities for later is an evident reason why we don’t complete what we set out to do. I recall reading an article on the website whatdoisaywhatdoido.com that began with, “Do you know what happens when a procrastinator has a good idea? Nothing! And when a procrastinator has a great plan??? The same thing… NOTHING!” And that is exactly what happens.

In one of his Instagram posts, Adam Grant stated unequivocally, “Procrastination isn’t laziness. You don’t put tasks off to avoid work. You do it to avoid unpleasant emotions-self-doubt, boredom, confusion, frustration.” Then he stated that the work we avoid isn’t usually what we despise. It’s not always the one we fear, it might be the one worth looking into.

Procrastination isn’t laziness. You don’t put tasks off to avoid work. You do it to avoid unpleasant emotions-self-doubt, boredom, confusion, frustration.

Adam Grant

The above statement holds true because we are emotional beings. The majority of our behaviors is based on emotions and that what set us apart from robots and machines. While we strive to act logical and provide excuses for every actions that we do, in reality most of our decisions and activities are emotional responses that we try to make them reasonable by providing excuses after executing them.

Our primarily brain that consist of the reptilian system (the earliest region of our brain that works for our survival) and the limbic system (the middle area of our brain that deals with our emotional responses) are both based on emotions rather than what we believe as logic.

Both of these parts are in charge of the majority of our everyday actions and decisions. Because it requires more cognitive strength and effort to operate, our prefrontal cortex (also known as the rational area of the brain) is only activated when it is required, when we provide attention, thinking, and do complex reasoning. This is related to the Executive Control Function in our brain. A set of important linear mental skills that assist us to execute our attention and direct our mental efforts.

According to psychologist Robert Pluchik, the creator of the Pluchik Wheel of Emotion, we have more than 34000 emotions that are simplified into 8 basic emotions in 4 opposed pairs, Joy – Sadness, Anger – Fear, Trust – Disgust, Surprise – Anticipation. The number of those basic emotions are questioned by other researchers in the past 30 years ranging from 4 to 27. But what all scientist agree with is that those emotions are driving our behaviors and influences our daily activities whether we believe it or not.

In conclusion, being able to recognize and regulate our emotions, acknowledge our biases, set achievable goals, and overcome procrastination all play a vital role in bridging the gap between our aspirations and accomplishments.

The post Bridging the Gap Between Intention and Action: The Importance of Understanding Our Emotions and Biases appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Neuromarketing: 3 Factors to Strengthen Your Brand Memory

“Consumers don’t think how they feel. They don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.”

David Ogilvy

The preceding statement reveals why the Behavioral Economics and Neuromarketing disciplines were established.

For decades, researchers and professionals have relied on questioning individuals about their motivations and behaviors in order to analyze their behavior patterns and activities and, as a result, develop goods, services, or plans based on the information obtained.

The reality is that we are not as rational as we believe! In fact, the majority of our brain operations are performed on autopilot by our primal brain which is unconscious and not systematically logical, with just a small proportion performed by our rational brain to do complicated computations, reasoning, and learning.

This understanding of the human mind has called into question the accuracy of traditional marketing research, as well as the validity of common qualitative and quantitative methods for assessing consumer behavior, such as surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and old-school observations.

This in return often leads to one of the most prevalent biases that we experience on a daily basis, the Outcome Bias where we subconsciously accept the outcome as granted, without paying attention to what brought us to that conclusion. As a result, in many cases, we base our judgments on faulty or deceptive resources, resulting in an outcome that is based on incorrect data and information.

Consequently, the field of Neuromarketing has emerged to challenge the concept of old-fashioned marketing research and campaigns, opening the door to limitless potential to improve our understanding of consumer behavior and develop successful plans and strategies based on accurate scientific neuroscience tools and findings targeting the dominated unconscious section of consumer brain.

Clement Levallois and his team in their paper “Translating upwards: linking the neural and social sciences via neuroeconomics” defined Neuromarketing as the subset  of  neuroeconomics,  which  combines  neuroscience,  genetics, economics, and psychology to understand  how  specific  neuron  activation  may lead to larger scale market behavior.

In Neuromarketing, consumer preferences and behavior toward specific brands are influenced by habits, perceptions, feelings, and personal experiences, as opposed to traditional marketing, in which consumers are treated as rational targets who can deliberate and are fully aware of their preferences and motives, which have been proven to be incorrect.

In this article, we will discuss the importance of memory in our everyday decisions and offer three factors that will help us enhance consumer memory for our selected brand.

But Why Memory?

Brands can’t be positioned in consumers’ minds unless they are registered and retrieved from our long term memory.

Ahmed Al Ansari

Memories do not exist in isolation; they interact with one another to form meaningful patterns in our brain. Our short term memory can hold up to 7 objects at a time, which can last roughly 20 seconds before being lost unless those memories are wired into our long term memory.

Patrick Renvoise, co-author of The Persuasion Code, stated, “- It’s not what you communicate to your audience right now, is important, it’s what they will remember when they make the decision.”

This is crucial to understand and act on since it is not about the moment of experience that a consumer had when are experiencing the touch points of a brand, but about what the consumer will remember and decide upon when things get wired in their memory. The response might be in milliseconds or even after years! And here it’s very important to notice that our experiencing memory is not a copy of the memory that we recall later!

In his book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman discusses the massive difference between our experiencing self and our remembering self.

Our experiencing self is the true moment that we come into contact with an object or an event, and our remembering self is when we recall our experiencing self and mostly remember a portion of the event, or another version that has been manipulated in our brain due to interconnection with other memories, which may or may not reflect the actual moment we had.

For example, imagine going to a 3 weeks trip to visit a relative in the Kingdom of Bahrain, you had an amazing two week of family gathering, attraction, shopping and food. The last week ended with you having an accident, breaking your leg and getting to your home town on a wheelchair!

In the above scenario, your experiencing-self had an excellent time for the first two weeks, but your remembering-self will assess the entire trip as poor or chaotic! And it’s not only that! As Kahneman mentioned in one of his TED Talks, You may remember less than an hour from your entire 3 weeks trip and if you had some photos you might recall barely another 30 mins.

This gave rise to the Peak-End Rule, a cognitive bias that explains how we tend to remember the peak (climax) and the end of prior good or bad events while unconsciously ignoring the remainder. This is seen clearly when we recall movies, relationships, or in memories of childbirth, where a woman recalls the agony of the experience (Peak), but after the kid is delivered, the joy and satisfaction of having the child dominates the whole experience.

The above cognitive bias is associated by the Representativeness Heuristic, a mental shortcut that allows our brain to quickly judge or solve issues around us based on emotional responses utilizing a snapshot of our memories rather than examining the actual experience itself. It is essentially how we compare a current circumstance to a previous representative pattern stored in our memory.

It thus brings us to the subject of how to associate the Ad Memory to the Brand Memory in marketing communication, in which we may have a strong ad that gets wired in our memory in a flash or by repetition, but later, our brain retains the ad without any link to the brand that it was representing. In other words, we may have a really strong and effective ad or message, but it will be disconnected from the representative brand that leads to a failure campaign!

A well-known example is the most-awarded advertisement of all time, “Dumb Ways to Die“, which was intended to communicate awareness and educational messages to teenagers in Melbourne, in order to enhance railway safety. Surprisingly, despite the fact that the animated song with its beautiful darling creatures became popular, the rate of injuries in the six months after the promotion was chaotic.

What happened here! Why it went wrong! As Dr. Peter Stidel mentioned in his book Neurobranding, the popular animated ad have created a counter effect with teaching teenagers the different methods available to kill themselves rather than providing a strong connection between the ad and the Melbourne Rail brand. In fact, the animated music video become so popular that the brand itself was neglected from memory.

Humans are emotional in nature, and as a result, people who build their plans on sophisticated assumptions frequently overlook the fact that we are driven by simple and emotional impulses.

Following a fundamental knowledge of why memory is important for brand positioning in the minds of consumers, the following three factors by Patrick Renviose, co-author of the book, The Persuasion Code, can help improve memory registry and retrieval.

Repetition                  

Do you recall as a child when your teacher asked you to memorize the multiplication table? You began by reading it, then repeated it until it eventually registered in your brain!

Repetition is a major contributor to the formation of habits, which in turn contributes to our brand preference and choice. This is related to the Mere Exposure Effect, which states that repeated exposure to a stimulus improves familiarity and likability of what that stimulus presents.

With the assistant of the other two factors, Emotions and Position, when we are repeatedly exposed to a brand identity, attributes, or ambassador in multiple contexts, we automatically recall it and connect to it more and more.

The connection between neurons in our brain is strengthened each time we repeatedly absorb the same information through our different senses, allowing it to encode faster information into the Amygdala (emotional data storage) and Hippocampus (episodic memory storage) parts of our brain that register long term memories. 

This takes place in unconscious emotional level with some assistant of our rational brain, and it is true for many situations that requires repeated practice and exposure to the learning subject such as storing and remembering our best friends’ birth date, a T.V ad for a certain brand, or how certain product or service functions.

It is crucial to note, however, that repetition does not often convert ad memory to brand memory on its own; rather, it promotes process fluency, and fluency builds brand preference in consumer’s minds.

Furthermore, the occurrence of several exposures at the same time (Temporal Adjacency) enables your unconscious brain to intuitively link those patterns just because they occurred together, impacting brand positioning significantly. However, not every repeated stimulus will be registered in the memory and that’s why the other two factors can provide great assistance to strengthen the process.

Emotion

Emotions are far more powerful than logic. All behavioral and neuroscientists have reached this conclusion after decades of study and experiments on the human brain and its effect on our behavior and decision-making processes.

Unfortunately, as much as we would like to believe that we are logical in our responses, we are not. Our Primarily Brain, which consists of our Reptilian and Emotional (Limbic) brain systems, is in charge of our survival and emotional experiences and reactions, as well as leading our decision-making process, allowing our prefrontal lobe to assist with cognitive learning and reasoning activities.

As mentioned above, our experiencing self and remembering self are way different from each other as we often register and recall moments and information that are more emotional than the rest of the pattern.

As Dr. Peter Steidl mentioned, “We know that the more deeply an event is classified by the emotions surrounding it, the longer it is remembered and the more detailed that memory is”.

For example, attending to a restaurant and eating nice food might be in average interest, but attending the same restaurant and unexpectedly getting 50% discount may wire that moment in our long term memory due to the amount of pleasure that we unexpectedly gained during that experience!

It’s crucial to incorporate emotions in your brand building strategies as the amount of emotions your brand generates makes or breaks its chance to be registered in your long term memory.

Ahmed Al Ansari

Position

Repetitions and emotions, when combined right, can significantly improve the process by which we register and recover brands and their attributes from our long term memory, but there is another essential aspect to consider, and that is the placement of stimuli inside the context of the conveyed event that we communicate.

We briefly reviewed the Peak End Rule and how our brain registers and retains the event’s peak and end while paying little attention to the remainder of what occurs. Another cognitive bias is the Primacy Effect, which explains that individuals recall the beginning and ending parts of an event far better than what happens in the middle. This is critical to understand as marketers should position the most significant brand messages and values in those locations to achieve the best results.

Let’s look at a basic illustration of how the three factors may work together to improve brand memory. Assume we have a new startup that sells premium cellphone accessories like ring covers, holders, and gold stickers. The brand identity and core value propositions should be included in the first 1 minute of a 10 minute presentation regarding the outstanding offering of the brand.

These primary themes should be echoed throughout the rest of the presentation with unique emotive messaging that will stimulate customer interest and produce a peak effect directly linked with the brand. The key principles should be reiterated and stated at the conclusion to aid in recording such attributes in the brain and strengthening brand recall in the minds of consumers.

Simply said, if a brand is not recorded in the consumer’s memory, they will be unable to recall it, hence, they will have no brand awareness and preference, which could trigger their behaviors and decisions.

Ahmed Al Ansari

As we can see, it is not enough to provide the consumer with an exceptional experience, as this may or may not activate consumer interest or the purchasing behavior; instead, it is critical to associate that experiences with strategies that will elicit positive emotions and aid in registering that pattern in the consumer’s long term memory.

The post Neuromarketing: 3 Factors to Strengthen Your Brand Memory appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Blockchain Games: The Rise of NFTs

The video game industry has been constantly evolving since the first video game developed by Steve Russel and his MIT team back in 1962, entitled “Space War” and the release of Atari’s first commercial video game “Pong” in 1972, offering new technologies and magical experiences for individuals and enterprises alike.

According to Terry Stancheva based on her article 50+ App Revenue Statistics – Mobile Is Changing the Game, more than 2.5 billion people play games, the global gaming industry is projected to reach $256.97 billion at a rate of 9.17% between 2020 and 2025 where users are spending 380$ billion on in-app purchases worldwide.

The gateway to this immersive world is open to anyone who can bring unique perspectives, values and beliefs to their target audience. This is true for any sector that can use this digital environment to solve a problem or present an engaging value.

In this article, we will be discussing about blockchain games and a new type of cryptographic assets entitled NFT, a newly emerging type of video games that might change the perspective of how we used to interact with game environments, in-game purchases, and digital assets.

This innovative form of games is based on Blockchain technology, leveraging the advantages of a decentralized data system as well as the power of special types of smart contracts called Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT). Those smart contracts allow each element of the game to be unique, scarce, transferable, and have distinct ownership.

So far, we’ve been  playing games like Minecraft, Fortnite, and YuGiOh Duel Links where we create our universe, upgrade our characters and cards, buy new weapons or gadgets, or even speed up in-game progresses without owning those digital properties, or even being able to retain or move those assets from one place to another.

Gamers spend a tremendous amount of their money, effort, and time to level up, collect items, complete mission and build a memorial experience within the game. However, they don’t own their digital assets and achievements as everything within the game has no true value in the real-world from the gamer standpoint. Moreover, game developers own and restrict the usage on their digital assets that are created or developed on their platforms.

Therefore, blockchain games came in place to change this idea by introducing a new kind of immersive experience where end-users can own, purchase, sell, build, share, or even auction their digital assets with the entire world whilst game developers have no authority or power over those digital assets.

Although the technology is still in its junior stage, a lot of interesting projects are heading to the market and we’re going to go through some of them in more detail after explaining what NFTs are and what makes them different from standard crypto tokens such as BTC, ETH and XRP.

What are NFTs

NFT is short for Non-Fungible Token, a special type of cryptographic asset which was initially built on top of the Ethereum blockchain using its state of art smart contract capabilities. Unlike fungible tokens such as BTC, ETH, USDT, XRP … etc, where each token instance is identical in value and functionality, non-fungible tokens are special types of unique collectible tokens based on the ERC-721 Smart Contract Specifications and the next generation standard developed by Enjin Coin ERC-1155 which will be discussing in more detail later in this article.

An NFT can represent an entire digital asset or reference a real world physical entity giving its own permanent node on the blockchain. While each Bitcoin is identical interims of characteristics and functionality and all US dollars has the same value, shape and can exist in mass quantity, Each NFT is a genuine collectible digital asset that cannot be reproduced, inflated, and has assured ownership.

The first instance of NFTs came into picture with the CrytoKitties game developed by Axiom Zen (Dapper Lab) where players could own, buy, collect, sell or even breed digital artworks of cats and monetizes the entire process on top of the ethereum blockchain. The game gained a lot of hype and traffic in a sense that some digital kitties were sold for more than 100,000$ with the most expensive digital kitties purchased at 60Eth approximately 170,000$ back in 2018. CryptoKitties have opened the door to a new world of digital assets where people can turn almost anything such as artworks, content, hand crafts, collectables, furniture, tickets, and even ourselves into an NFT and add a true value to it.

Image 1.1 – CryptoKitties game by Axiom Zen – (Dapper Lab).

New projects are being introduced every day utilizing this new standard in all sorts of fields such as entertainment, identity verification and accreditation, artwork and asset ownership, decentralized finance and trading, storing and securing content, copyrighting, real-estate, retail and packaging, and much more.

Even in its early days, NFTs trading volume per day have reached to 370,000$ traded on in-app marketplaces or platforms such as OpenSea, EnjinX, and Rarrible where they allow NFT owners to connect their crypto wallet and trade their NFTs with the entire world.

We might see new NFT smart contracts that are used for the real-estate industry where people will be able to uniquely identify the ownership of a property and buy, sell, transfer, or mortgage the real physical asset worldwide. Likewise, we might reach to a state where directors, actors, models, and influencers turn reputation and their entire content to NFTs.

New disruptions leads to crazy opportunities.

So why it is a serious deal to associate computer games with blockchain and NFTs?

Before we go through the above question, we need to be familiar with the crypto project that dedicated itself to blockchain games and digital assets developing one of the most advanced NFT smart contracts, the ERC-1155.

EnginCoin and the ERC-1155 StandardImage 1.2 – EnjinCoin sample projects.

With regards to blockchain games, it’s essential to make reference to the Enjin Coin ecosystem, a crypto project that came to presence as the first devoted crypto coin for the blockchain gaming and virtual asset industry. The platform is intended to act as a decentralized platform to implement, manage, store, and exchange virtual resources.

Videogames can utilize Enjin for its complete tokonomic solutions, where games can introduce fungible tokens for various types of in-game and 0ff-game transactions, as well as NFTs, to represent a distinct digital asset on the ethereum network where users can own, trade, or store permanently.

In addition, Enjin is the creator of the ERC-1155 Smart Contract Standard on the ethereum blockchain, where multiple fungible and Non-fungible tokens can be represented by the same NFT node on the blockchain, unlike the ERC-721, where only 1 specific digital token can stored per class.

This standard have allowed various shifts in the NFT market specially in the game industry where in-game fungible tokens such as coins and gems are transacted along with digital assets such a weapons and skills. To simplify it further, ERC-1155 is a smart contract the joins the functionality of both the ERC-20 and ERC-721.

The EnjinCoin’s Enj token can be used to control and manage the entire ecosystem and all kinds of transactions for the acquisition, sale, transfer and melting of virtual properties. It can function as an in-game currency to buy, sell, upgrade, speedup progress within the game or to store, manage, trade, exchange digital assets in or off-game.

It’s no wonder that Enjin has collaborated with world-leading names such as Samsung, Microsoft, UbiSoft and Unity to introduce the next wave of online gaming. A lot of playable games are utilizing the Enjin token nowadays while others are in the process of development such as Azure Heroes, War of Crypto, Lost Relics, Nestables, Forest Night , Forgotten Artifacts, 9 Life Arena, Cats in Mech, BitCoin Hodler, Age of Rust and the list goes on forever.

However, Enjin is not the only player on the blockchain gaming world. In fact, some of the well-known blockchain games at the moment are not based on the EnjinCoin ecosystem.

Blockchain Games in Action

There are tons of gaming projects that are in development on top of the blockchain where each project provides immersive game play, fluid game mechanics and tokonomics. Some of those games that we will be going through in this section are already in their pre-alpha, alpha, or beta stages having a decent amount of audience and unexpected international support.

Most of those games are built on the ethereum network as few years ago this was the only network that Decentralized Applications (Dapps) and smart contracts could be developed on. This has caused those projects to face different challenges due to the pitfalls and limitations of the ethereum network interim of its limited transaction per second (TBS), scalability, and intolerable high gas fee.

However, projects such as Axie Infinity, DecentraLand, The Sandbox, and War of Crypto…etc have still moved forward ignoring all those pitfalls wishing for ethereum 2.0 to launch and fix those issues. Today, there are many new technologies that overcome ethereum’s problems and provide a much more convenient system for developers and users alike, ecosystems such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Waves, Cardano, and Elrond to name a few. Moreover, there are projects such Flow Blockchain from the creator of CryptoKitties which is in early development dedicated to NFT projects.

Surprisingly, in the last two years, ethereum has been increasing in demand, and some of those games have made great progress despite the above-mentioned facts. This proves how big the market for such projects is, and how gamers are willing to switch from the state where they pay to play towards owning and earning while they play.

To demonstrate the potential of NFTs and blcokchain games in general we will go through few games that have created some big buzz in the decentralized gaming space.

Axie InfinityImage 1.3 – a sample image from the upcoming Lunacia world from Axie Infinity.

Axie Infinity is a blockchain game in its Alpha stage that has more than 7000+ active users so far provided an engaging game experience along with a strong tokonomics model. The game is about owning fantasy creatures called Axies where they can be used for battles, breeding as well as trading in the marketplace.

Each Axie is a unique NFT digital asset having its own unique ID on the blockchain. Gamers can buy, sell, breed, transfer and play with those axies to gain some real cash or obtain Axie Infinity’s own fungible token called SLP. SLPs are potions that are used in the breeding process and at the same time those SLPs can be bought and sold on decentralized exchanges such as Uniswap.

Axies can have 9 different classes thus far such as Beast, Aquatic, Bird, Reptile, etc with 3 different stages where they grow from egg and larva to become an entire adult ready for battle. According to their website, there are about 167075 Axies thus far each having different sets of parts, abilities, stats and rarity with the most expensive Axie sold as much as 160 Eth.

Game developers are very involved with new tournaments, updates and features are introduced each month. The PvP arena session 11 is open now where participant can battle eachother and earn Dai Tokens and SLPs. Users can buy lands and assets to populate the new Lunacia World and Project L which are coming soon. People can trade Axies and digital assets in-game or on external NFT platforms such as OpenSea and Rarible.

The game is becoming popular in low-income countries such as the Philippines and Venezuela, where people are earning their monthly income from this game by playing full time in the current pandemic situation. While it’s still not officially released, Axie Infinity is by no doubt a solid game that pushes NFTs and Blockchain games to the next level if it keeps on delivering its promises.

DecentralandImage 1.4 – Screenshot of Decentrland home page.

The first virtual world environment on top of the ethereum blockchain where users can customize their own avatar, explore, find friends, chat, trade, create and monetize their digital lands and assets. The project aimed at establishing the concept of digital asset ownership in the form of NFTs.

Imagine it as SecondLife on blockchain where people are allowed to buy, rent, or sell their own land and digital assets, create and monetize their entire experience or simply explore and earn or send some cash. The platform is entirely in 3D, allowing artists to design and export 3D assets to the marketplace, while other users can purchase those assets in order to use them on their own land and create their unique virtual worlds.

Mana is the fungible token associated with Decentraland and that can be used to purchase lands, assets and gaming services. People can use the land to create all sorts of personal and business experiences from interactive exhibits and educational projects to games and enterprise simulations.

The Sandbox GameImage 1.5 – A sample image of the Sandbox Game from its main website.

A community-driven Voxel sandbox game similar to Minecraft where users can purchase, build, rent or sell their lands and states as well as create and own their voxel assets using their state-of-the-art Voxedit and Game Maker software. Users can trade all type of digital assets including lands in the in-game marketplace or any external NFT trading sites on the blockchain. The potential of this project is massive interims of scale, development and utility.

In contrast to the above games, 40 million potential audiences might be switching to this game as this is a complete 3D remake of their original successful 2D game that was released on IOS and Android since 2012. The game is backed up by some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry such as Atari, SquareEnix, Legendary Bears, and Animoca Brands. All of those partners have already bought a massive amount of lands and states where they will create their own games and virtual experiences.

Thus far the Sandbox game had major updates and land presales of different sections of their world map and all of them were sold completely. According to their blog on September, the latest Presale 4 (round 2) sold 4,512 lands lasted for 4 days where in each day the lands were sold in minutes.

Similar to the Mana token above, the Sand token is the official fungible token associated with the Sandbox project used to govern and manage the entire sandbox experience from trading all type of digital assets, monetizing the games developed on the lands, to renting properties or developing reward schemes.

There are many other blockchain games that are in their playable, Alpha or Beta stage such as the Nestables that uses the Enjin Coin ecosystem, LightNite, a low poly stylized battle royal game on top of the BitCoin blockchain utilizing the power of the lighting network to overcome Bitocoins mainnet limitation. In addition, there are complete playable games such as Brave Frontier Heroes and SplinterLands where their NFTs can be traded in-game or on external NFT trading sites.

More new games with new technologies are in their way such as Etheverse that promises to implement an entire tokonomic system on top of Minecraft, Blankos as an open world universe to own and build which its beta version will be live on November 17th, and the first blockchain game on PS5 entitled The Six Dragons to name a few.

Obviously blockchain games are getting a lot of hype, big companies and indie developers alike are competing to be the first mover in this junior market. However, it’s important to mention that there are a lot of risks involved in this new direction where technologies are not perfect yet, many publishing platforms does not allow monetizing games to be published on their services as well as there are gaming projects that are considered gambling or can be used as money laundry where it has a religious and legal dimensions to consider.

Moreover, as it’s obvious with the Defi bubble in the last year, a lot of projects might turn to be scams, fail to deliver or shutdown for legal or technological reasons. It’s important to be careful, research and do your due diligence as well as develop or support projects that are legit.

New trends and disruptions provide new world of opportunities for people who are smart enough to make use of its outstanding potentials. The sky is the limit when it comes to new born technologies such as the Blockchain and NFTs.

With the immerse of new and more powerful decentralized networks such as Polkadot, Cosmos, Cardano or even Layer 2 solutions on the Ethereum network such as xDai and Matic, NFT based projects might surprise us with unexpected solutions in the upcoming few years.

The post Blockchain Games: The Rise of NFTs appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Level 5 Leadership

Level 5 Leadership is the 6th and the final factor of the series, 6 Factors to Improve Innovation in the GCC Region.

Decision-making is a critical factor for every node within the ecosystem. They are the people who decide on all the important aspects of an entity with complete or partial authority and power.

Parents/Guardians are decision-makers for their family, founders, managers, and administrators are decision-makers for their organization while key government staff are decision-makers for their entire country.

Decision-makers are responsible for the choices they make; the consequences of their choices may affect other nodes in the system or even the entire system itself. Therefore, having the right decision-maker can build or break the node or the whole society.

Mikael Krogerus and Roman Tschäppeler in their 2016 TEDx speech have simplified the concept of decision making into a Venn diagram having the three elements of Experience (preparation), Time, and Satisfaction level.

In a nutshell, more experience leads to better decisions unless you reach a stage where there is too much information (TMI paradox) keeping in consideration the right timing and the balance between satisfaction and perfection. I really recommend watching the video to understand their entire theory.

As we understood the importance of having genuine decision-makers in our society, we reach to the concept of having great leaderships who can achieve productive decisions.

One of the best and simplest definitions of leadership is by Warren Bennis “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality”.

Leaders with leadership skills are the ones who listen before they act, think before they respond, able to turn weaknesses into strengths and threats into opportunities. They are experts in their fields and wise in their judgments working as a part of the team rather than giving orders and doing ad-hoc decisions.

Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” revealed the concept of Level 5 leadership. The type of Individuals that has all the characteristics of a leader however what makes them more successful than others is the fact of they are not doing what they do for themselves but for a greater cause.

They are those who can enrich people, economies, companies, lifestyles, art, etc. with their skills, dedication, and humility. They seek the larger picture and dedicate themselves to the cause. These are the kind of leaders we need to develop, place, and let them do their magic. Those are the individuals who should decide on all the factors from 2 to 5.

In one of his speeches, Jim Collins referred to the concept of the Hedgehog and the Fox by philosopher Isaiah Berlin as a unique theory that divides leaders to whether they are a Hedgehog or a Fox.

Hedgehogs are the typical leaders that we see the most around us. They are esteemed in organizations since they use equations and “best practices” to introduce their thoughts. They are engaged and address what individuals know. Their thoughts strengthen solace and conviction, even in an evolving world.

On the other hand, foxes are the trend-setters, interfacing apparently random spots and pushing the limits. They can see alternatives and take a new approach to every situation while most others center on where it is at the present time. We require both types to survive a successful society.

One of the best approaches in my opinion is to have a decision-making unit (DMU) in an organization that consists of few Hedgehogs who are surrounded by foxes. While the hedgehog is trying to build the vision with his analytical approaches, foxes are there to provide unique and alternative solutions to end up to many robust decisions.

 Lacking proper leadership skills can be one of the major factors in being a late majority society rather than innovators. We might reach a state where we gain all the necessary resources and environments to progress but by having weak or non-capable expertise in the wrong positions, we might end with chaos.

Leaders who are defensive, lack evidence, or have conflicts of interest are not the right leaders to be a part of decision making unit. Moreover, individuals with ego having limited or irrelevant experiences can turn the equation upside down and contribute negatively to the main cause.

It’s no wonder that 88% of the 500 fortune companies in 1955 are not in the list today. In contrast, we see companies that managed disruptions very well such as IBM and Nintendo with the later switching their entire product lines from playing cards back in 1889 to selling ramen, taxi services then what we know them now as one of the leading console and video game companies worldwide.

I will end the final factor with a quote from Peter F. Drucker:

 “Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results, not attributes.”

Peter F. Drucker

In conclusion, to improve innovation in our dearest GCC region we need first to understand the true meaning and the importance of innovation in our societies, tackle the problem from the root by preparing parents to better raise their children towards scalping their children’s future and feeding them with excellent insights and pathways to generate the next generation of human capital.

Moreover, we need to build a dynamic educational ecosystem and prepare students and employees for their robust careers and businesses having the support of the entire system and encouraging the entire society to be self-dependent whether in the level of our countries or individuals.

Further, we need to learn how to monitor and manage disruptions and prepare long-term strategies to boost our innovation level and start being creators rather than consumers.

Finally, we won’t be able to achieve non of the above if we lack level 5 leaders who are well-qualified and have the ability to turn long term visions into true realities.

The post Level 5 Leadership appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Monitoring and Managing Disruptions

Monitoring and Managing Disruptions is the 5th factor of the series, 6 Factors to Improve Innovation in the GCC Region.

What happened to countries such as Greece and Ireland or companies such as Kodak, Nokia, and blockbuster are not unfamiliar to us anymore. Trends are shifting very fast and people are switching their interests, lifestyle, and actions accordingly.

We are in an era where we pay 400bd for a laptop in one day where it gets outdated in the upcoming 6 months. We used to buy our tickets and hotel reservations from local travel agencies while nowadays we prefer getting them online. We used to pay in cash yet now we are more into paying with credit cards or applications such as Benefit Pay.

Try not to be astounded if someday fiat currencies have lost their trust and people switched to trading with gold or if cryptocurrencies have been adapted around the world.

New ideas, beliefs, strategies, and technologies can emerge and change our whole viewpoint on observing things how we used to see them.

A study by Future Foresight Foundation in Abudhabi entitles “JOBS OF THE FUTURE 2040” has revealed that many of the current jobs exist nowadays will be outdated in the future while automation can be practiced on 45%-50% of all the jobs exist in the UAE market today.

The study was dedicated to forecast and prepare a roadmap for Generation Alpha giving insights into different types of expertise required to cope with the market in the future. 

When a disruption occurs, it affects the entire culture opening the door for new opportunities and closing the gate forever on others. 

As a productive node belonging to a larger ecosystem, you should monitor and manage disruptions to sustain your progress and the functionality of your node.

Let’s take a larger node such as the government for an example. In GCC countries, most of the country’s income was based on the oil industry. It’s a matter of fact that the oil will not last forever or even worst, some of the major industries based on oil are shifting gradually to more convenient and environment-friendly alternatives.

A lot of initiatives were made in the fields of alternative energy, tourism, banking and finance, real estate and recently simplifying foreign investment and entrepreneurship to create and improve other sources of income. 

A study by Worldbank.org in 2019 have revealed the percentage of non-oil sectors contributing to their GDP in GCC countries, Kingdom of Bahrain 82%, UAE 70%, Oman 59%, Saudi Arabia 57%, Qatar 53%, and Kuwait with 48% being the most oil-dependent country in the GCC region. 

From the figures above, it’s obvious that the Hydro-carbonic industry is still playing the main factor in countries such as Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia while the Non-Carbonic industries mostly reside in services industries or a minimum of sectors such as alternative energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, logistics, Fintech, and fisheries.

All of those figures were before the Covid-19 pandemic. The situation is much worst now as the culture was disrupted again to provide a lot more challenges to the table that were not in the equation before.

 It’s important to ask ourselves the following questions,

Are we aware of the current trends and disruptions and did we forecast future transformations based on proper research?

Monitoring and managing disruptions are essential in the current market circumstances. For example, investing in 4G technologies while 5G will be out a few months later will cause crisis and bankruptcy especially if the trends life cycle were not kept in consideration.

A model I have created a few months ago “Corona Marketing” published on Forbes Middle East website can assist marketers, business developers or even economist to consider disruptions in their future studies.

Are we tackling the right solutions focusing on long-term strategies or we are only trying to fill the current gaps in the market?

This is a very critical question as it will define the scope of the entire initiatives. It can be a mixture of both; however, the optimum goal is to focus on long-term goals keeping short-term goals for necessity. For example, to create an automotive engine industry in the Kingdom of Bahrain we need to prepare the infrastructure, capable HR, and allocate proper research materials, tools, budget, and regulations to turn the concept into a reality.

Do we have enough local and regional human resources to proceed with our long-term strategies or we will be relying on foreign expertise?

Here, we will refer to all the previous factors discussed thus far. If we do not yet have enough local and regional expertise, we need to work first on building the infrastructure and scale up our student and HR knowledge base to fit the new context. As mentioned above, all the nodes should work hand in hand to build the optimal foundation.

So in a nutshell, disruptions are something that the society should utilize and let it work for them and not against them through innovative thinking, up to date research, unique strategies, and what we will be discussing in the final factor, level 5 leaderships.

The post Monitoring and Managing Disruptions appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Self-Dependency

Self-dependency is the 4th factor of the series, 6 Factors to Improve Innovation in the GCC Region.

Self-dependency can be divided into two types, it can be at the level of a country in which we refer to it as a self-sufficient or self-reliant economy/place/country or at the individual level in which it can be referred to simply as self-independent or self-reliant.

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn’t just skills like computer technology. It’s the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command.

Steven Pressfield

The term itself can apply to any entity that can match its demands locally out of different categories such as energy, food, materials, human resource, etc or all together. Self-dependent economies, which are completely closed from the outside world, are called closed economies or what is known as Autarky.

According to a study published in researchgate.net, the Middle East and South Africa are on the list of non-independent food countries as they depend on trade and imports to fill their market gaps.

However, countries such as the USA, Canada, Russia, Argentina, Brazil, and Indonesia are self food-dependent as they can fit their requirement and export the rest.  Another type of self-dependency is in the field of energy, which Masdar City in UAE is a great example in the GCC region. The ambitious project is meant to achieve a 100% environmentally friendly city based on clean energy.

We can see how self-reliant country/location/society is important in terms of costs, availability, and economic consistency. One of the most important components of dependence is human resource.

Having local expertise and professionals capable of performing all kinds of tasks and duties is a key driver of innovation in a specific society.

The three factors that we have discussed thus far were to establish an infrastructure to achieve this goal.

However, no matter which era we are living in, we always end up with some old mentalities that insist on adapting the status quos. They will reject innovation and spread negativity all around society.

Most of the time, those are the majority of the population, and when someone comes up with a unique or a new concept they will be the first to attack and slow them down.

Don’t even bother, because that exactly what happened with some of the famous minds around the world such as Thomas Edison, Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Newton.

They were discarded by their own society while people used to think that they were mentally not sustainable. However, by looking at their achievements, those are the people who truly changed the world.

If we couldn’t find enough support, it doesn’t mean to quit our dream. In fact, it should give us more motivation to do it ourselves or gather a team and let our dream be a reality.

We have many more resources than the above names had in their times! Nowadays, we can easily travel, and buy books, use the internet and research journals and articles, meet experts, or even attend online courses.

The sky is the limit if we really want to learn and create a difference.

Let’s keep in mind that every game changer once was like us, a person with a specific goal, and with more knowledge, practice and proper execution, they took their legendary seat in history.

Once we gained that specific expertise, discovered that component, or achieved that target, then recognition, achievements, and rewards will knock our door sooner or later.

If we have discovered how to cure the Covid-19 virus or invented a device that can convert the wastage into clean energy, then we will find people race to get us on board simply because we are delivering an added value, a benefit that has demand.

Unfortunately, we don’t believe in our talents to achieve or deliver. Therefore, we don’t invest and support their innovative efforts. However, in countries such as Singapore, USA, Germany, or Japan, if they found a talent anywhere in the world, they will treat them like royals and do the impossible to pull them to their labs and lavish their skills.

It’s important to realize that success brings money, but money doesn’t always bring success. You may fail many times until you reach your goal, but when you do so, it will be much easier to convince society and jump to your next milestones.

In factor number 5, Monitoring and Managing Disruptions, we will tackle the importance of understanding the continuous disruptions and trends in our societies and how monitoring and managing them affects innovation with real-world examples.

The post Self-Dependency appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Dynamic Educational Ecosystem

Dynamic Educational Ecosystem is the third factor of the series, 6 Factors to Improve Innovation in the GCC Region.

We are living in an era where trends are changing like a rocket. What we learn today is probably outdated when we graduate tomorrow. It’s difficult for the current education system to cope with a market that gets disrupted all the time. Therefore, The old method of having a single book and doing exams is no longer effective. 

Based on a study by Damon Clark, David Gill, Victoria Prowseand, and Mark Rush entitled “Using Goals to Motivate College Students: Theory and Evidence from Field Experiments”, task-based goals had robust positive effects on the level of task completion with increased course performance.

However, performance-based goals had positive but small effects on-course performance. The study was meant to clarify the concept of assigning goals to tasks and achieving those tasks rather than evaluating students based on their performance such as assessing their grades.

While the above study does not provide the necessity of coursework elimination, a study by John Richardson entitled “Coursework versus examinations in end-of-module assessment: a literature review” has revealed the advantages of coursework in contrast with the old school examination assessment.

As mentioned in our 2nd factor “Parenthood”, we need to prepare the next generation of human capital from their homes to be ready for a new education system. A system based on research, assignment, and capstone projects.

We need to read more, learn how to extract information, practice, and deliver our own results. By doing so, we learn ten times more than reading a textbook and doing an exam based on that textbook alone.

It’s not like exams are not necessary because they have their own successful scenarios and circumstances like in professional certificates and licenses. However, the old system of examination should be replaced with a dynamic version that can assist student in practicing and achieving rather than memorizing some concepts and writing it down. Of course, the core concept should be taught but the rest should be entirely based on research.

The entire education system should be fully dynamic backed up by innovative sessions, competitions, skills in self-governance along with a proper system of rewards and achievements.

Besides, students should learn how to work together, be productive as a team member, and make their own critical decisions. When they get older, they should be guided and taught about the needs of the market over the next 20 or 30 years and the types of carriers and barriers that exist along with the objectives of each carrier.

Students should be given a chance to understand the consequences of their choice to be able to prepare themselves for their future plans.

Further, the system should provide options, paths, and vacancies for the next generation fields. It’s true that we need doctors, architects, bankers, lawyers, designers, managers, technicians, and marketers …etc but from the other side, who should we approach if we are interested in learning about robotics, machine learning,  blockchain, cloud computing, industrial design, and material science?

Yes, we are getting some options nowadays here and there but they are not part of our dynamic ecosystem and most of the people are not ready for such fields as they didn’t learn the core principles in their previous years.

A student should be well prepared before school so they can be ready for such an education system, tutors should be well equipped with the latest technologies, models, methods, and research materials so they can provide the right knowledge to students.

Governments should support the entire process from A to Z while companies and research centers should assist students in schools and universities to scalp their creativity and build them for their future business or carriers.

According to a study by OECD, Governments can’t innovate in the study hall, yet they can help construct and convey the case for change. They can likewise handle a key job as stage and specialist, as a trigger and empowering agent; they can invest in the infrastructure and center assets, set a facilitative strategy atmosphere, and take responsibility to permit innovation.

It’s not only about students. Even parents, employees, leaders and entrepreneurs are a major part of the ecosystem and they need to be continuously up scaled and updated to fit the demand of this dynamic market.

Here, I’m pointing at different nodes connected effectively to each other producing a dynamic ecosystem where parents, governments, companies, universities, schools, research centers, teachers, students…etc are all collaborating to achieve a well-established human resource structure to benefit the society’s progress to success.

A business expert in one of the Whatsapp groups that I joined recently mentioned that when he was younger he was interested in the field of agriculture. However, his family told him if he was expecting to be a farmer or a fruit merchant! When he grew up, he realized that the field was full of research opportunities, innovation, and was interestingly diverse. This is a clear example of how a lack of knowledge can lead to poor decisions.

It’s important to approach the right person for advice. If you are not qualified for providing certain types of guidance then simply don’t.

To build a strong dynamic educational ecosystem we need to improve each node in the system and create a well-established connection that can feed each other with proper resources.

In the next factor we will be going through the concept of Self-Dependency and how implementing it in our societies can improve our progress towards innovation significantly.

The post Dynamic Educational Ecosystem appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.

Parenthood: Raising Society’s Knowledge Base from the Root

Parenthood: Raising Society’s Knowledge Base from the Root is the second factor of the series, 6 Factors to Improve Innovation in the GCC Region.

A family is the simplest representative of society, and a person is the smallest member of the family. All societies around the world have typically started with the simplistic form of a family, and with more individuals moving and living together sharing a common geographical place, economic environment, wealth, and culture, the term civilized society may be applied to them.

As Marianne E. Neifert mentioned in her book Dr. Mom’s Parenting Guide,

“The family is both the fundamental unit of society as well as the root of culture. It is a perpetual source of encouragement, advocacy, assurance, and emotional refueling that empowers a child to venture with confidence into the greater world and to become all that he can be.”

Marianne E. Neifert

As a result, a family is a key element of any society and any issue within a specific society needs to be solved from its very roots.

Parents/guardians rearing methodologies plays the most critical role in people’s behavior, attitudes, decisions, and life objectives. Educated parents should provide their children with the right atmosphere to pursue inspiration and scalp their abilities. It also provides physical and mental support for children needed to carry on a successful healthy life. It’s very easy to demotivate children to seek knowledge or to carry out useful activities.

Guardians should be well educated and insightful enough to scalp their children’s future and feed them with excellent insights and pathways so that children can reach a stage that will allow them to make good decisions for their lives.

As stated by Jennifer Lee and Min Zhōu in their book The Asian American Achievement Paradox, Japanese parents expect their children to contribute more effort to their educational activities. They devote most of their family resources such as household space, funds, and parental time to develop their kids for a proper academic environment.

According to businessinsider.com, and based on a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Western Asian countries dominate the top 5 smartest countries in the world, with Singapore at the top of the list, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan.

The study was based on student scores in the fields of mathematics and science, taking into account the nation’s educational systems.

Not one of the GCC countries ranked among the top 40 in this list, where the UAE remained the highest-ranked GCC country at 45, followed by Bahrain 57, with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman ranked 66, 68, and 72, respectively, at the bottom 10. Unfortunately, Kuwait didn’t make it on the official list.

Obviously, parenthood has a significant impact on children’s academic and mental abilities. To observe that more, let’s take a look at parenting styles theory by Psychologist Diana Baumrind released back in 1960. It categorized parenthood into three distinct styles entitled Authoritarian Parenting, Authoritative Parenting, and Permissive Parenting.

In Authoritarian Parenting, the child follows strict rules as defined by the parents. This style leads to children who are loyal and capable, however low in bliss, social fitness and trust.

Authoritative Parenting, on the other hand, gives children a set of rules and regulations, but parents are responsive and listen to their children’s needs and act accordingly.

This kind of parenthood leads to children who are happy, capable, and successful. The third type based on the study by Diana is Permissive Parenting. Parents who rarely discipline their children are more responsive than demanding. These children are bound to encounter power issues and will generally perform ineffectively at school.

There are children who attend the first grade of the school who can speak 3-5 languages, do mathematical calculations, and decent reasoning, while others can barely spell their names correctly.

When we see kids who are in the 7th grade creating their own robot systems or managing complex AI projects we should realize that they are the same age as other 7th grade children around them.

These differences in abilities are by no means a coincidence, we can raise our children to hate math and sports, or we can guide them and prepare the right environment to let them be the next Einstein or Belle.

We need a proper system in the current dynamic societies that educates parents before children so that they can raise their children to the standard that society expects.

As studies have shown us, the first 5 years of our children’s lifespan are the years that they can obtain the maximum amount of knowledge, skills, health, and mental stability. Therefore, let’s equip our children with the necessary tools required to be successful in their upcoming life journey.

In the next factor, we will discuss the importance of a dynamic educational ecosystem and how to prepare our students and human capital to be an integral part of this framework.

The post Parenthood: Raising Society’s Knowledge Base from the Root appeared first on ALANSARI STUDIOS.