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Manufacturing needs change. Today, black swan events have wrought havoc on global supply chains.  The COVID-19 pandemic and response have caused disruptions, delays, increasing costs, and an atmosphere of anxiety about the future.  Despite the chaotic world surrounding them, manufacturers are under constant pressure to fill orders quickly, maximize quality and efficiency simultaneously, and improve working standards while reducing costs and increasing production complexity.  The current model is insufficient for meeting all these needs given the world we occupy today.

Thanks to the newest technology, manufacturing has the tools they need to adapt to future disruption.  Efficiency and sustainability can be increased by digitization with new technologies like artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things driving change.  End to end visibility cuts waste, non-value activity, and byproducts.  Predictive maintenance reduces disruption and environmental impact.  The benefit of adaptable technology and equipment is that it can be easily reconfigured to accommodate new products and changes.  AI-powered product demand simulations can help businesses determine how to scale production to optimize efficiency and agility.  With new technology comes new workforce demands; a versatile workforce is required to interpret data and work in virtualized or augmented reality environments. 

Equally important to improving operations in future factories is improving sustainability.  Rethinking manufacturing, production, and distribution could eliminate 45% of global emissions.  Manufacturing alone represents 20% of global emissions; major changes to the sector would have a dramatic impact on the global trajectory towards warming.  If just 5 areas of manufacturing improved, emissions would fall by an amount equal to the elimination of all transportation.  From a business perspective, responsible waste management reduces costs.  Efforts to increase sustainability drive innovation while bolstering company image.  Green processes can also ensure regulatory requirements are met preemptively; most businesses would prefer to set their own schedule instead of letting a government impose one on them. 

Outside the factory doors, manufacturers need to do just as much reimagining as they did inside them.  A major problem of the COVID-19 pandemic is its impact on supply chains.  Lockdowns in one country prevent intermediate goods from reaching another, causing ripple effects across the global economy.  To avoid similar problems from happening in the future, companies should switch from single source suppliers to creating a value network.  While single suppliers are available at a lower cost, value networks have more resilience and flexibility available to them.  Future factories need to leverage advanced planning and scheduling to plan for disruptions and ensure their network is able to bounce back from challenges.

In 2018, just 12% of companies had a mature factory of the future plan.  Now that recent events have revealed the need for such planning, that percentage should increase rapidly over the coming months.  Starting one’s transformation journey doesn’t have to be hard.  There are 4 steps: evaluate disruption opportunities, determine your company’s maturity, plan and execute your strategy, and drive transformation success.  Transformation depends on people, processes, and technology.  Neglecting one threatens the success of all three factors. The future is now.

Obtaining pet insurance is a crucial part of pet ownership. The U.S. is home to 3.1 million insured pets. In 2020, a whopping $103.6 billion was spent on pet-related products and services in 2020, and $31 billion alone was invested in veterinary care. Depending on the type of policy you choose, pet insurance covers wellness, accident, and illness care and can help you prepare for an unexpected vet visit.

The U.S. pet industry is projected to generate $109.6 billion this year. Taking a look at where the costs of pet ownership are spent, food and treats accounted for $42 billion, veterinary care for $31 billion, grooming for $8 billion, and other services accounted for $22 billion.

In addition to budgeting for one-time costs associated with vaccinations, a crate, spaying/neutering, and training, it is essential to allocate emergency funds in case your pet becomes injured or seriously ill. Even with the best care for our pets, things like this happen, with three of the most common pet illnesses being poisoning ($1,783), torn ACL ($3,300), and cancer treatment ($5,000).

Is pet insurance right for you? Your pet’s specific needs may or may not make you a good candidate for pet insurance. U.S. pet insurance premiums reached nearly $2 billion last year, an increase of 26 percent over the prior year. With 83% of insured pets being dogs, many owners are reaping the plentiful benefits of pet insurance.

Parenting a pet is a lot of responsibility. Be responsible by staying ahead of the game proactively, obtaining the best vet care, and finding the right pet insurance. Be there for them, and they’ll be there for you in return.

The new iPhone 12 includes a LiDAR scanner which can help improve the time it takes for a photo, and allows for rapid focusing in darker conditions. Most people have not had experience with LiDAR in the past but this technology has been around for 60 years. The technology was even used to help map the moon during the Apollo 15 mission which took place in 1971. The following are various areas where LiDAR data can be used. 

LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging which uses light to detect objects to create a digital point cloud. The following are various things that LiDAR data can be used for:

• LiDAR can help the agriculture businesses find areas that are best suited for growing. Flying a drone with LiDAR can help gather this data incredibly quickly. There is also technology that can help note which crops might need more water or nutrients. 
• Archeology has been impacted by LiDAR as it can help identify hidden structures around the world. Finding these structures in areas that are difficult to access is quite common. 
• Astronomy uses LiDAR as NASA even used the technology to help explore Mars. This also helps create a map of the alien planet and could even detect precipitation like snow that was falling. Understanding these things is important when trying to detect if life would be viable on alien planets. The data that can be generated can help image planets in such a way that was impossible in the past. 
• Climate scientists have been using LiDAR to study the frequent changes within the atmosphere. Botanists have used it to help track patterns in certain areas. Understanding growth patterns of certain plants in a specific area is important. 
• Land management uses this in order to do disaster assessment after a storm or earthquake. This is essential as driving to assess this might not be possible but with technology like a drone, there are no safety concerns as a drone can be replaced, unlike a human life. Resources on a piece of land can also be a part of the data set. There could be areas that have no access by land or boat after a disaster. The drones will be able to assess the damage as a landslide could have taken away the only route by land. 
• The oil industry uses this to detect oil and gas deposits. Pipeline inspection is also done with LiDAR as a damaged pipe can lead to an environmental disaster. 
• LiDAR helps the renewable energy industry in a variety of ways. LiDAR data can assist surveyors and energy companies determine the best place for a solar farm.
• LiDAR is used in autonomous vehicles to help detect the distance between other cars and objects to avoid while driving. This shows the speed at which the data can be gathered, translated, and a decision is made by a vehicle. Data has shown that there would be a large reduction in accidents if everyone had an autonomous vehicle. 

Look for data to become an even larger part of daily life in the coming years. The ease of collecting data will also become of paramount importance. LiDAR can allow massive amounts of data to be gathered in a short period of time. Look for this technology to enter into your daily life within the next decade. Drones have already entered the lives of a number of people in their personal and professional lives. The footage that can be taken of an area with a drone can make for great introductions for television and travel programs.

Did you know 60% of marketers invest in content creation every day? As businesses continue to realize the potential of content marketing, there is increased competition to create engaging content.

However, consistently coming up with new content ideas can be exhausting. That’s where brainstorming comes in. It offers insight into new niches and topics that can help create a holistic content marketing strategy.

8 Brainstorming Techniques For New Content

We have listed some of the most effective brainstorming techniques that will help you to generate new creative content.

1. Make A Concept Map

A concept map is a way of organizing your ideas with the help of tables, charts, and pictures. With the use of visual aids, you can gather all of your content ideas on one page. You can use Miro, an online concept map maker, to write down your thoughts easily.

Mapping rough ideas out can help reveal relationships between different topics and genres. It also helps boost creativity and helps visualize your content strategy.

2. Freewriting

Freewriting allows you to write whatever comes to your mind. Give yourself almost 15 minutes, and then start writing without hesitation. Don’t worry about any grammatical errors, typos, or any contextual issues.

The idea is to let your ideas overflow. Once your time is up, go through your written information. Between the incoherent structure and mistakes, you will find many little gems, golden pieces of insights, discoveries, which you can use in your content.

Moreover, this technique will help you to find your hidden creativity and some extraordinary ideas.

3. Looping

Looping is an enhanced version of freewriting that helps you focus on your raw thoughts and insights hidden deep inside your subconscious mind.

Loop from one freewriting exercise of five to ten minutes to the next until you have a chain of multiple freewriting pieces. In this exercise, make sure to follow the freewriting rules so that every outcome is more detailed than the others.

Thoroughly read all of your freewriting looping cycles and explore all the creative ideas, phrases, and sentences. Moreover, you will probably notice a recurring subject concept or theme that you have been thinking about unintentionally. Or, you can find a new idea or theme which you can use in your future writing project.

4. Listing

Listing helps you write down a list of words, sentences, phrases, and basic information while writing about a certain topic or trying to explain a specific idea.

For example, if you are writing on cooking skills, jot down aspects you might be covering in your content, such as the importance of cooking skills, ingredients, elements, etc. Do not hesitate to write anything that comes to your mind as no one will be judging you.

Moreover, do not edit at this point; let it be as raw as possible. Finally, once you are done listing, gather those logically, which will help you structure your piece.

5. Mind Map

A mind map is a pictorial form of your thoughts. You put the central top in the middle and write associated ideas around it.

It is one of the most used brainstorming techniques that writers use. It allows them to think beyond a topic and allow them to discover subtopics and related topics to cover in their content.

6. Nut-Shelling

Nut-shelling helps in summarizing the topic you will work on. For this brainstorming technique, you break down your ideas into two or three sentences. It enables you to work on both major and minor ideas to use them in your content. Moreover, these ideas work as the essence of the subject.

7. Research

It is always important to research before writing on a topic. First, check all the related sites, blogs, articles, and grab all the important elements to be covered. Others will appreciate your work if you have relevant stats and facts.

 Secondly, it will help you adapt to different writing styles.

8. Cubing

Cubing is an important thinking method that analyzes a topic from six different angles, just like a cube. It covers:

• What exactly is it about?
• What is it similar to or dissimilar to?
• What are the main elements?
• How can it be put to use?
• What are its advantages and disadvantages?
• How can you support or oppose it?

It will help if you have a plan or perspective for approaching your topic or project by the end of the activity.

Conclusion

If you ever get stuck in creating new creative ideas for your content, try using brainstorming techniques. These techniques will help you discover your hidden creativity and give a unique perspective to tackle a topic.

You will have multiple ideas to shape your content according to your abilities by the end of the day. It can also be done as a team activity to benefit the most from shared ideas and strategies.

The digital revolution has changed business forever.  Across all sizes and industries, companies are turning to electronic storage for their records.  Billions of people worldwide are connected by internet access, opening the door to business opportunities that didn’t exist a decade ago.  By 2022, world data will more than triple, and half that data will be stored in the cloud.  Perhaps more dramatically, 2020 events caused a work from home revolution, allowing 70% of Americans to perform remote work during that year.

Despite all the benefits these changes bring to companies and their workers, they also create prime conditions for one major threat: rising levels of cyber crime.  As more people and companies gain internet access, the opportunities for malicious actors to extort them grows.  With more people conducting business online, risk has increased exponentially.  Data gets shared across multiple apps and cloud services, offering cyber criminals even more opportunities to steal it.  IT departments are less able to protect against security weaknesses in workers’ homes than they would be from an office.  Furthermore, remote workers are more likely to use personal devices, which rarely meet appropriate security standards when handling company data.

The world of cyber crime is large and growing rapidly.  If cyber crime were a country, it would boast the third largest economy in the world. Ransomware is the most common form of cyber attack, and its prevalence is increasing at an alarming rate.  In 2020, a person, business, or device was attacked by ransomware every 10 seconds.  That is a 50% increase over previous years.  By 2031, a business, person, or device could face some kind of cyber attack every 2 seconds.

Meanwhile, the costs cyber crime incurs on legitimate actors is mounting.  The damages due to ransomware alone increased over 7,000-fold in the latter half of the 2010’s.  In 2015, damages due to ransomware amounted to $24 million.  By 2020, that value was $170 billion.  The global, anonymized nature of cyber crime makes it difficult for legal authorities to prosecute cyber criminals.  Ample opportunity combined with near-impunity makes for fast proliferation of the cyber criminal lifestyle. 

Even corporate giants can’t assume they are safe from cyber crime.  This year, Acer was attacked for $50 million, the largest reported ransom demand from a cyber attack.  While Acer didn’t pay the demand, meat processing giant JBS Foods gave in to their hackers, delivering the largest reported ransom payment to the tune of $11 million.  It is official policy for the FBI to discourage paying the ransom to hackers, but affected businesses often feel they have little choice.  Ransomware and malware can do serious damage to company operations, putting the affected business between a rock and a hard place. 

Yet while the largest corporations may not be entirely safe from a cyber attack, they often have confidence they will survive one.  Meanwhile, small to midsize businesses (SMBs) rarely possess that level of assurance.  For them, cyber attacks are a common, often fatal occurrence.  In the past year, 66% of SMBs fell victim to at least one cyber attack.  Of those hit with a data breach or hack, 60% go out of business within 6 months of the attack.  These two figures together spell tragedy for thousands of SMBs worldwide.

Why are SMBs so vulnerable to cyber crimes?  As many as 45% of SMBs recognize their cyber security systems are ineffective, and this may be an underestimate.  Even security “best practices” are falling short in recent years.  Common protection tools like 2-factor authentication and “strong” passwords are still vulnerable to hackers.  Around 80% of IT leaders say their company lacks sufficient protection to prevent a cyber attack, and 77% of their organizations don’t even have a response plan they can follow in the case of an attack.  This lack of preparedness levies tragic consequences on SMBs.

If a single cyber attack is successful, a business can lose everything.  The money they lose goes beyond ransom or extortion; replacing and repairing infected devices is expensive.  When systems are shut down in an attack, revenue-producing operations screech to a halt.  Not only is a business losing money, but its revenue stream is dammed temporarily.  In the longer term, a business’s reputation suffers from being the victim of a digital burglary.  Customers don’t want to shop with businesses that can’t keep their data safe.  A shrinking customer base is a recipe for bankruptcy.

How can businesses of all sizes avert this tragic fate?  Better cyber security may prevent future attacks, but it doesn’t help businesses recovering from past ones.  To that end, businesses should invest in cyber insurance.  For SMBs, a normal cyber insurance policy covers up to $1 million in damages.  For the purpose of cyber insurance, “damages” are defined broadly.  Coverage includes profit losses from reputation damage or halted operations, liabilities that come out of contract penalties and media fines, and lawsuits of the class-action and regulatory investigation variety. 

It is worth noting that coverage does not include physical property, long-term profit losses, stolen intellectual property, or (increasingly common) ransom payments.  Ransom payments are growing increasingly unaffordable for insurance companies and often put insurers at odds with US laws that forbid payments to sanctioned individuals and/or jurisdictions.  Despite these gaps in coverage, more businesses are turning to cyber insurance as their lifeline.  The digital world has numerous dangers associated with doing business.  Successful businesses protect themselves from danger.