Rather than wringing our hands about robots taking over the world, smart organizations will embrace strategic automation use cases. Strategic decisions will be based on how the technology will free up time to do the types of tasks that humans are uniquely positioned to perform.
Clara Shih
Technology may be traditionally perceived as a male-dominated industry, but it won't always be that way. Every day we see more and more powerful women leaders boasting outstanding achievements.
I believe that rather than it being a case of humans versus machines, the future of financial advice more likely lies somewhere in between, where human advisors leverage artificial intelligence and automation to become smarter and more efficient at doing their jobs.
With new technologies promising endless conveniences also comes new vulnerabilities in terms of privacy and security. And nobody is immune.
My high school, the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, showed me that anything is possible and that you're never too young to think big. At 15, I worked as a computer programmer at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab. After graduating, I attended Stanford for a degree in economics and computer science.
The need for strong partners and employees persists throughout the life of a company, but it is especially important in the beginning.
Companies can't delegate social media to the new college grad and think they have it covered.
My father, a math professor in Hong Kong, worked as an electrical engineer here. My mother was an art teacher, but once we came to the United States, she went back to school and became certified as a special-education teacher.
Technologies and specific vendors may come and go, but massive cultural transformations and new kinds of relationships? Those don't go away.
When startups succeed, they do so against all odds. In the beginning, you have nothing except for your own talents and resources. By definition, everyone else is bigger, further along, and more established than you. To win, you have to swim upstream early on - and that requires hard work and long hours. There are no shortcuts.
I don't watch TV or movies or play video games.
Social media isn't a one-way broadcast; it's a multiway opportunity for dialogue.
My entire life, I have viewed every problem as an opportunity - I've had no choice.
Many companies talk about customer success, but how many actually put the customer first above all else, always?
Like many of my fellow entrepreneurs, I didn't create Hearsay Social with my co-founder Steve Garrity because it would be fun and easy, but because we're at our best when faced with enormous challenges.
The whole point of social media is continuity and continual engagement.
Looking back at my first job, even when I was asked to do something seemingly menial, unglamorous, or very difficult, I always went all-in. In my most trying moments with managers I liked the least, I did not give up, complain, or slack off.
Listen more than you talk.
'The Facebook Era' articulated a radical vision for how social media would transform media, relationships, and influence, creating new opportunities for businesses in the process.
Social networks particularly will tend to converge and consolidate over time, especially because they're inherently governed by network effects. So the bigger ones will just get bigger, their value will multiply exponentially, and the smaller ones will become less and less relevant.
Strong emotional connections between individuals, customers, and salespeople that trust each other will always be 10 times more powerful than the most expensive ad campaign. That's the power social media makes possible.
As entrepreneurs, we must constantly dream and have the conviction and obsession to transform our dreams into reality - to create a future that never existed before.
In addition to replacing many jobs, automation will also transform other jobs. Professions involving high touch, personal relationships - such as clergy, dentists, and financial advisors, for instance - face the least risk of automation but will nevertheless be profoundly transformed.
I wrote 'The Facebook Era' because I felt like it needed to be written, and I was one of the people who might be qualified to do so. Specifically, my background is that I developed the first business application on Facebook.
I was born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States with my family when I was 4. I spent most of my childhood in Chicago. My elementary school had no program in English as a second language, so I was placed in a class for students with speech impediments.
The immigrant experience had a profound effect on me. It taught me the importance of hard work and the value of being entrepreneurial.
Social media teams can and do launch clever campaigns, but game-changing Social Business initiatives are typically driven by management teams.
Social media provides the modern-day version of mystery shopping and walking the halls.
There is, in fact, nothing easy about being an entrepreneur.
Though decisions regarding work/life balance are important and vary widely from person to person, it may not be wise in the long run to optimize for doing the bare minimum at work.
Great work, professional relationships, and learning experiences compound over time, much the way money does - investing $100 today creates much more value than investing $100 a decade from now.
Data is valuable, so let's be mindful of how we're sharing it.
If there can be three certain things in life, instead of two, it might be death, taxes, and data.
The most important thing I've done at work has been to surround myself with amazing people who I trust and empower fully to do stuff better than I could.
