News &
Resources
AS CASHLESS BECOMES A NORM
Writer Dave Wallace wrote an interesting article in the July/August edition of Fintech Futures magazine; and we’re happy to share it here, in edited form, for those who aren’t subscribers*. The other day, I spotted a rare creature in the wild – a new £50 note. I was standing at a bar, and the person next to me, who I knew, was trying to pay for a drink with this elusive and not-oft-seen denomination. There was a bit of toing and froing between said individual and the bar staff. Eventually, they said that the bar...
The art of “failing” well
The word “fail” is quite provocative, as RCS CEO Regan Adams says. It’s not, as we go about making our businesses, a useful word. But the notion of failure is a real threat hanging over all of us, and in a LevelUp panel discussion, this is what we asked: in our work, if we find ourself going down a path we’re not confident in, how do we recognise when to stick with it, or when to do a re-set?...
How strategy planning can miss the point
We re-read a 2014 Harvard Business Review article by Roger L. Martin that got us thinking again about how to plan and operate in a VUCA world. The essential challenge, Martin...
5 Meditations from dr roze phillips
Dr Roze is a futurist, a consultant, and an advocate for...
BIOPLASTICS: A NEW FRONTIER
Every year, especially during Plastic-free July, we all get a load of plastics education - such as that ±380m tons of plastic are produced globally, only about 9% of that is...
EXISTENTIAL CRISIS FOR CORPORATES
It's an irony that the two of the "poster-children" for...
SUPER APPS: THE FUTURE IS HERE
What is a super app? A super app is a seamless platform which hosts a cluster of businesses and services, and allows you to do everything with a single log-in. Let’s take the example of setting up a social meet: you can agree on a show (chat or video chat function); book the tickets (e-commerce); pay for them (mobile...
‘YOU JUST NEED TO TOUGH IT OUT’
If you are fortunate enough to be in the space where you’re scaling, you’ve made it through the first, very difficult phase of entrepreneurship: the “Valley of Death”. But still… there’s pain. At LevelUp’s first quarterly community session for 2022, which coincidentally was on the 2nd anniversary of the first...
WOMEN FOUNDERS ARE #WINNING. SO WHERE ARE THE INVESTORS?
At the Global Startup Awards Africa event in June 2022,...
PARADIGMS BUSINESS NEEDS NOW: PURPOSE, CREATIVITY, ANALYTICS
According to a recent McKinsey report, companies that...
FOR EVERY SILVER LINING THERE’S A CLOUD. FOR ONLINE SHOPPING, THAT CLOUD IS THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF RETURNS
As online shopping has seen exponential growth, so too has the volume of items returned, especially clothing. Free...
A CHALLENGE THAT COULD MAKE A BIG ECO DIFFERENCE – AND A LOT OF MONEY FOR SOMEONE
Here’s a challenge for designers, innovators and entrepreneurs: cigarette butts. Research shows that 65% of cigarette...
CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR BUSINESS WORLD
As parts of Europe and China flooded, and other parts of Europe and the US’s western states burned, the UN released a...
Case study: INNOVATION STUDIO
The world of finance is both static and innovative, conservative and courageous. More than three centuries after the...
WHAT IS ‘TOO OLD’?
We revisited an Institute for Future Studies (IFR) Scan from a few months ago, and enjoyed an insert that dealt with...
SA FINTECH: #WINNING
South Africa’s fintech vision, according to the Intergovernmental FinTech Working Group (IFWG), is: to be a...