Travis Kalanick believes that great entrepreneurs all share one common trait: an ability to spot the difference between perception and reality. Kalanick, the CEO of ridesharing giant Uber, said people perceived that the taxi industry was the only way to quickly get a ride. He saw it differently.  “That distance between perception and reality is the innovator’s playground,” he said to an audience of some 700 entrepreneurs at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit at Stanford University on Thursday. “You have to get used to people telling you are crazy and things are…

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A look at how air quality tech is helping people lead healthier lives. We breathe in, we breathe out. It’s as certain as the sun rising and setting. The question is, what is it we’re breathing? Suffice it to say, it’s not all good. According to the World Health Organization, indoor and outdoor pollution caused seven million deaths in 2012. The EPA has discovered that some of the most common air pollutants found in the US are particulate matter, photochemical oxidants and ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and…

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More businesses are accepting mobile payments, and as a CIO you should be thinking about how to streamline these digital transactions. A byproduct of digital business is that transactions require more advanced and streamlined payment options. PayPal was one of the first to recognize this. Square took the concept to an even higher level with its Cash app. Now Apple Pay, Android Pay and others are advancing the concept. I love pulling out my iPhone and using my thumbprint to pay securely for a Groupon purchase, retail transaction or vending…

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Tired of seeing storms roll in on your business forecasts? Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions can help you predict the best atmosphere for success. Learn about four of these critical prediction tools that you need in your ERP systems to weather storms and see sunny days. The New ERP Today’s ERP systems combine past data with real-time data to provide more accurate forecasts for business applications. Unlike older versions of ERP, having access to up-to-the-moment data creates a clearer picture of customer relationships, public perceptions, political influences and regulatory changes…

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Expect business, life and tech to change radically, as the IoT connects dots that were once invisible and introduces pricing models that were once impossible. As the Internet of things (IoT) takes hold and the ability to measure just about everything takes shape, it’s becoming clear—sometimes painfully so—that pricing models are changing dramatically. We’ve already witnessed the shift to subscription-based pricing for software. Now, a growing number of once pricey IT products and services—from hardware to bandwidth—have been reduced to commodities. Think Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure,…

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Big data can mean big value, and mobile is a great way to analyze it. Here are 10 apps to help you process and analyze your data. Tableau Tableau Mobile is a streamlined mobile version of Tableau’s software. It allows the user to add calculations and data filters with a touch, and it even shows offline snapshots of certain visualizations. Image: Tableau IBM Cognos One of IBM’s key business intelligence (BI) tools, Cognos, is available on mobile. Users can access existing reports and dashboards they have in Cognos, syncing content…

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