beyond finance

beyond finance

Expanding the Scope: Exploring Opportunities Beyond Finance

1. Diversifying Revenue Streams

After building 10 units in New York’s East Harlem neighborhood with 300 market rate units, the project manager of an apartment building created 1000 units of affordable housing out of steam due to mechanical problems at another site. These affordable homes support people’s homes within Orange County are aimed toward families living below 110% of Orange County median income. Other sources comment for a greater share of the increase in construction costs since developers would sooner purchase building permits and violate the penalty for newly create affordable housing is collected provided the outstanding rent by competitive affordable units reaches at least 30% of the total building permit fee collected. Furthermore, it has been argued that while reducing the use of private housing development in the short run, developing a broader and fair requirement will lay the necessary foundational support structure to certain level of initial approval by adding affordable housing.

Diversifying revenue streams. On October 15, 2020, the International Code Council announced that a number of associations, including the Associated General Contractors and the National Association of Homebuilders, had signed a deal to develop an inclusionary zoning code to be developed and enforced by local government. According to the Code Council’s statement, this policy approach expands on existing incentive-based approaches to include a regulatory approach. This public sector-created disincentive on market-rate housing development will serve to reduce affordable housing gap challenges by generating funds for privately-developed affordable rooming, low-income and affordable housing, and victim homeless housing projects with a longer-term commitment to affordable housing than incentives do. Creating more demand for costly product production will concentrate the affordable housing development subsidy on existing land rather than creating more housing units that make use of low-income and affordable housed land.

2. Expanding into New Industries

Using companies as an example, Cisco and other technology companies have achieved immense success in their business by deploying broadly the internet, which was first developed by the public sector with taxpayer funds. It’s easy to see that the public does not maintain broad deployment of these technologies in the future. Companies working with a broad blockchain technology could be expected to be similarly successful on a globally large scale. These new technologies enable the building of these economies and the amassing of economic power. The interpretation of any wealth is normal, falling in entailing social tension, not the kind of revolutionary new-jurisdiction model that could ever persistencies.

This is all possible to realize and will completely reshape just how logistics between continents might look. Efficient logistics is not only essential to global businesses, but a more comprehensive use of blockchain technologies across industries can contribute to realizing a second wave of globalization. Beyond that, any further deployment of kernel technologies over other projects will impact competitiveness.

The outcomes of mathematical and cryptographic principles and properties will dramatically expand the scope of blockchain technology to enable third-party counterparty risk as well in bi-party transactions. Consequently, the first non-financial use case was Maersk’s early ambition to use the technology to work for their logistics division in efficiently coordinating and automating various aspects of the supply chain. They aim to deliver one system for tracking shipments across the world, stored on a decentralized ledger somewhere in the cloud, instantly accessible by everyone, monitoring everything from customs clearing and port docking to the actual container content, temperature, and cry protecting procedures.

Expanding into new industries. Blockchain technology has become highly associated with financial services due to its inherent properties of automating trust and cryptocurrencies, which demonstrate what this looks like as a decentralized trust system. It’s logical that the finance industry will be one of the first to adopt this technology, but not the only one.

3. Leveraging Technology for Growth

Technology, that allows us to be connected to complete strangers and institutions by linking ourselves with others in a social network, has allowed disruptive innovation in a majority of transactions by leveraging the diverse network that exists around us. Social lending use cases in some emerging markets like China showcase the potential for such a model. Peer-to-peer lenders can grow a deposit book by using technologies like the IoT and AI to manage risks that are typically impractical in a physical world. Our lender, for instance, could use real-time information from a system embedded with a vehicle’s global positioning system (GPS) to track maintenance and traffic usage, or use information through health devices or sensors that monitor physical activities for the borrowers. Additionally, by leveraging social networks and the larger body of data available publicly or through third-party sellers, the offer could be significantly much more personalized to each borrower.

Banks have been known to invest heavily in technology. IT spend is typically pegged at between 10 to 15% of the overall operating costs, and technology’s influence is not limited to customer-facing applications. As the OFS, or on-us transactions or digital payments, have seen a progressive build-up, investment in infrastructure has seen a ramp-up that has led to exponential increases in volumes without a commensurate increase in cost. However, there is always an argument that focuses on the increasing from banking spend while revenues are stagnant – a question that has likely generated an industry focus on revenue-enhancing applications. However, the deployment of technology can, in a way, expand the focus of banks beyond loans and advances (and investments) – where the asset side of the balance sheet largely resides, focusing on the liabilities side which typically has seen a more consumer-driven build-up.

4. Developing Strategic Partnerships

Early partnerships, such as is the case with start-ups, may be typically less structured with little to no formal support relationships given the commercial relationships are founder and management driven. As companies grow, however, such loosely coordinated work relationships become increasingly difficult to manage and begin to impact the overall effectiveness of the partnership. A well-defined relational framework is required to keep interactions with banks within the Toronto-based start-up productive. For large banks, account representatives are appointed who manage as many interactions with the same company’s individuals as practical. Such managers are relationship focused, collaborating well with peers in other divisions. Such a framework also considers organizational (business) models to recognize unique aspects associated with each company-bank partnership.

Start-up businesses typically are without internal dedicated IT departments because such organizations often are staffed by individuals from the same industry who recognize an opportunity or business need that they wish to address. As businesses begin to grow, IT needs grow accordingly. External organizations can meet those growing IT needs by helping deliver applications which support business operations. Early strategic partners typically are relationship driven, and relative success of both organizations are linked. To illustrate, there is a Toronto-based company, one of whose principal lines of business centers on addressing new mortgage requirements as have been introduced in attempts to deal with soaring real estate prices. This company transitioned to the stagnant mode before establishing initial relationships with banks as strategic partners. For many Toronto-based start-ups, banks remain a lucrative prospective strategic partner group.

5. Investing in Human Capital

This serves to recall that investing in those young children who are born in conditions of extreme poverty (and are thus at risk of developing low levels of human capital) can unleash the creativity and dreams of millions of Michelangelo and Einsteins of the following generations, and that such efforts are a worthy goal in themselves, important for morality, for the happiness of the people, and for the self-fulfillment of the deprived human potential. Yet, caring about happiness, moral values, and the future of our nations is not enough to convince capitalists to invest in the 0-5 brains of the poorest children of the world, which are a minority of the human continuum.

Today, a world of information and a hurricane of technological change make it increasingly possible to invest in the most abundant and renewable resources on the planet: not gold, or silver, or other precious metals; but the minds of our children, especially those who are born in adversity and are naturally curious and creative, and want to learn. During the last two decades, many places and different types of programs have been developed and implemented around the globe. Randomized control tests in various settings have demonstrated that early childhood nutrition, stimulation, and parenting programs can bring 13 Hz back to these (poor) brainwaves and trigger immediate and long-lasting changes in the cognitive and socio-emotional skills of impoverished children, as well as improvements in their schooling outcomes and labor opportunities, and in the physical and mental health of the young adults that these once-impoverished children will become. These interventions have been credited with high rates of return, thus strengthening global knowledge.