Effective problem-solving is not just a useful skill; it’s a critical survival tactic. In a fast-paced world, successful problem-solving is essential for both people and organizations.

Happy New Year! We hope you enjoyed the holiday season and are looking forward to 2024. Given the flurry of news and activity at the end of the year, we thought we’d summarize the key items you may have missed:

Understanding the intricacies and impact of natural and artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming paramount, whatever your industry. The concept of levels of abstraction emerges as a critical framework we all need to know. It provides a compelling lens to explore how consciousness might arise from lower-level processes, hints at when AI might develop general intelligence, and guides collaborative approaches that are easier for humans and AI to comprehend. Learning how it works might also give you a tool to make smarter decisions.

You’ve defined the problem, your data is clean and ready, matching it to an appropriate solution is easy, right? You may have the traditional ‘build or buy’ decision to make, but either approach should theoretically be straightforward. Yet statistics show many projects falter at this stage – in 2022 the Standish Group reported that only 4% of new software application projects are successful (with 49% failing outright), and only 30% of software package deployment projects meet with success. All of which suggests there is flaw in the process, which leads to the question of whether there might be a better way to deliver solutions, with a much higher success rate.

You have a clear definition of your problem, you just need to get the data, and then you can start building a solution. Great, your IT department says, we think we can get that for you in about six months. Arghhhh!

There is an alternative, though, the business department already has most of that data, in exports from transactional applications plus home-grown spreadsheets they manage themselves – perhaps you could use that?

When Einstein famously said, “If I had 60 minutes to save the world, I’d spend the first 55 minutes defining the problem, and the next five minutes solving it”, he was sharing hard-won experience. Once you’ve got a clear problem definition, the solution frequently falls into place. But that’s not the whole picture. For one thing, problems aren’t static, and then there are other issues to contend with – such as cleaning and preparing data, or picking the right solution from a panoply of choices.

Last year we posted about the five superpowers SWARM software can deliver to supply chain companies, but there is a sixth power that seems to be in remarkably short supply right now, which is stronger than the others. What is this remarkable power? Luck. 

It feels like EVERYBODY is talking about OpenAI and ChatGPT, even your great aunt will want to discuss it with you at the next family BBQ. Having spent some time using the tool, I would agree that it’s very impressive and completely understand why Microsoft are planning on investing $10 billion in the company.

This has been an exciting year for SWARM, here are some highlights:

Get the SWARM Challenge Modeler - Today!
It's been a delight to finally announce general availability of the SWARM Challenge Modeler, and access to the personal edition is free to all. This tool lets business users easily define and publish their biggest issues, in a standard and repeatable way. It also links directly to our SWARM Solution Engine, for rapid delivery of SaaS solutions. We would encourage you to give it a try here!

Good news: the AgriTech conferences last week in San Francisco were a big hit, and the exhibition hall was filled with high quality attendees from a mix of agricultural firms, venture capitalists, and ag-focused software startups. The bad news? Well, I must confess…

Everything is about hyper-efficiency these days. In our new world of back-to-back video calls and meetings, the faster we can do what needs to be done and exit the session, the more chance we have of carving out a few minutes for ourselves to do some real work! Meetings can be scheduled by bots, agendas and materials can be shared in advance, a chair can keep track of progress and mute or drop disruptive talkers with a button click, and we can ensure that everyone gets to have their say – including the introverts with their camera’s permanently turned off.

Over the last decade the food and agriculture industry has seen a virtual explosion of information and data from sensor and IoT devices. While the good news that we have an abundance of data like never before, the bad news is that we can’t hope to process it in a meaningful fashion.

Anthony Howcroft, SWARM CEO, interviewed by Holly Self on the launch of his book Questions - A User’s Guide

FoodBytes! ran a webinar with pilot alums Michael Lee (Meat & Livestock Australia), James Bello (Shameless Pets), along with Chamidu Karunathilake (GrainCorp) and SWARM’s CEO, Anthony Howcroft , to discuss their learnings about how to maximize ROI from corporate-startup collaboration. There were some great points and interesting discussions, and the webinar managed to be ‘zoom-bombed’ by the regulation barking dog, and even a gardener with a leaf blower!

Europe has over 1400 ports and terminals, but not all of these locations have the same resources to develop or apply smart tools from a digitalisation viewpoint as is witnessed in major ports, such as Antwerp, Hamburg…

S2G Ventures have recently published an excellent report on the future of food in the age of covid. It includes some great analysis on the challenges, and looks at trends for investment, technology, business, and consumer behavior. It even looks…

As if the human effects of coronavirus were not tragic enough, it is now clear there will be a huge economic and societal impact, too. The short-term forecast for hotels, airlines, conference providers, restaurants, retailers, and movie theaters are bleak. It will take some time to measure the true cost and calculate the damage, in lives cost, failed companies and lost jobs + income. There will be a handful of beneficiaries, perhaps dried pasta and toilet roll manufacturers…