Issue 76, July 2016
bulletDigital Future
bulletInterview with Verena Pausder - A Young Global Leader Shaking Up the Berlin Start-Up Scene
bulletInnovation: Pay with a Tweet - Leveraging the Power of Viral Marketing
bulletStreamlining Urban Mobility Decisions with the Ally App
bulletFesto's Cyber-Physical Learning & Research Platform Prepares Workers for Industry 4.0
Digital Future 
Digitization is fundamentally changing the way we live and work. It is one of the key forces behind the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT). This emerging connectivity of physical objects to the web promises to help businesses accelerate efficiencies and increase profits. Industries will also be disrupted. Cisco predicts that the market valuation of the global IoT ecosystem will reach $14.4 trillion by 2022.
 
Manufacturing is one industry that will undergo major transformations. Smart factory concepts will play an important role in this new industrial age known as "Industry 4.0." Looking ahead, Germany is heavily invested in ensuring the success of automated manufacturing, in which the virtual and physical worlds will merge through cyber-physical systems.

This month's newsletter explores a number of exciting advances coming out of Germany in today's digital age - from an app that helps streamline decision-making about urban transit options to an online service that offers innovative viral marketing tactics.


article2Interview with Verena Pausder - A Young Global Leader Shaking Up the Berlin Start-Up Scene

Each year, the World Economic Forum selects the most innovative, enterprising, and socially minded men and women under the age of 40 who are pushing boundaries and rethinking the world around them.
 
Verena Pausder, CEO and Co-Founder of the leading digital publisher Fox & Sheep, was selected to join this exclusive circle of "Young Global Leaders" for its Class of 2016. Pausder will partake in a five-year leadership journey with an elite community that will help break down barriers, bridge cultures, and use its collective skills to effect change across public, private, and civil sector organizations.

Pausder is an entrepreneur with a great passion for the online and mobile industries. She believes that parents should teach children how to handle new media responsibly rather than closing themselves off to it. Her Berlin-based company works with authors and illustrators to develop high-quality children's apps that offer fun learning experiences. These apps include "Wake Up with Shrek!" and "Dinotrux," which were developed in collaboration with Dreamworks Animation. 

Pausder currently writes a weekly blog for the German business magazine Wirtschaftswoche and has appeared on numerous occasions in the press, including in Forbes' "From the CEO of Fox & Sheep: Parenting in the Age of Angry Birds." Back in 2006, Pausder was named "CEO of the Future" in a contest initiated by McKinsey.

In her interview with GCRI, the 37-year-old businesswoman discusses how apps can help children navigate today's digital age. She elaborates on a few current projects at Fox & Sheep and discusses why Germany is a good place for app development. Further, Pausder describes some of the challenges inherent in developing apps for children and how this differs from developing for an older target audience. Lastly, she describes what potential education technology offers for reaching historically disadvantaged user groups. To read the full interview, click here.

Image: Verena Pausder
article3Innovation: Pay with a Tweet - Leveraging the Power of Viral Marketing

Classic online marketing is dead. Referral marketing, which is more efficient, is the new way of attracting customers to a brand and results in a higher return on investment (ROI). 

The Hamburg-based company, Pay with a Tweet, is helping turn online users into brand ambassadors. It manages the reward process between companies and their customers by verifying that customers have shared a brand with their friends via social networks. It also ensures that customers receive the promised reward for doing so. For example, customers can be given access to discount codes, e-books, gift cards, music, and videos.

Companies like Starbucks have implemented a Pay with a Tweet campaign to push brand awareness. It allowed customers to download a free branded calendar after sharing their affinity towards Starbucks online. Other high-profile clients using Pay with a Tweet campaigns include BBC Radio, Universal, Cisco, HubSpot, and Continental.

Implementing a campaign on a company's website is easy, making the user experience quick, simple, and secure. Pay with a Tweet understands that clients want to reflect their brands and corporate identities as part of the marketing process. Therefore, it allows companies to set up the entire sharing process in line with individual brand guidelines. 

While the free version of the software has advertisements, professionals who do not want third-party ads interfering with their campaigns can choose to purchase the ad-free business version. To further ensure marketing success, Pay with a Tweet statistics enable users to track daily traffic details, impressions, clicks, shares, and referral traffic. 

Pay with a Tweet already has 40,000 campaigns worldwide and more than 8,000,000 shares. Businesses that use the service experience a 60 percent boost on average in initial campaign traffic. 

To watch a video about how Pay with a Tweet works, click here. To learn more about running a test campaign, email: business@paywithatweet.com. 

Source & Image: Firal GmbH

 
article4Streamlining Urban Mobility Decisions with the Ally App

Got somewhere to go? Which mode of transit will get you there the fastest? With ally, an award-winning urban mobility consumer app, this guessing game just got a lot easier. ally compiles data on all city transportation options into one spot, enabling users to compare pricing and timing of car sharing, bike sharing, public transportation, taxis, and other transit options.

Do you want people to know what time you'll arrive? After starting your journey, you can share it with your friends, so that they can track your progress and know exactly when to expect you. Go to same place often? Instead of typing in the same addresses over and over again, create shortcuts for your home and work locations so that you get there at just the tap of a button. 

From Berlin to Mexico City, ally serves as a city transportation guide in over 100 cities around the globe, and the company is always adding new cities to the mix. It was voted amongst Apple's 'Best Apps of 2015.' 

ally was developed by the Berlin-based start-up door2door, a cloud intelligence provider for urban mobility solutions. door2door was recently highlighted by the German Ministry for Transportation and Digital Infrastructure (BMVI) at the 2016 International Transport Forum (ITF). door2door enables city governments, transit authorities, and industry players to tap into new businesses, optimize existing operations, and offer personalized mobility services. Its partners include Uber, Deutsche Bahn, Lufthansa, and the World Bank.

To learn more, follow ally on Twitter @theallyapp or visit its blog and website. 

Source & Image: door2door GmbH 
article5Festo's Cyber-Physical Learning & Research Platform Prepares Workers for Industry 4.0
 
The proliferation of data being produced today and the complexity of plant networks and company divisions are radically changing production processes. As a result, new skill sets and advanced manufacturing solutions will be required.

To operate and continuously optimize production facilities and to develop flexible, intelligent components, employees will need to be able to communicate both a general understanding of fully automated, digital production technologies and in-depth knowledge of the structure and programming of digital facility networks.

Festo Didactic, a world-leading provider of equipment and solutions for technical education, is playing a key role in this arena. The company designs and implements learning centers and laboratories, educational equipment and programs that train individuals to perform in complex environments. Its goal is to maximize learning success in educational institutions and industrial companies around the globe. 

Festo's customers receive state-of-the-art networked automation technology. The practical training provided on the use of these new technologies is conducted using the company's cyber-physical learning and research platform called the "CP Factory." The platform replicates the workstations of a real production facility and enables users to learn how to program production facilities, set up networks, and optimize many other aspects, such as energy efficiency and data management. In addition, the CP Factory can also be used to develop and test flexible software solutions prior to their implementation in production facilities.

The CP Factory is part of a holistic learning factory solution, a modular learning environment that can be used to train personnel to operate a particular production process or about a specific field of work. Different qualification modules can be added to the CP Factory, including process-oriented training in the fields of mechatronics, logistics and process optimization as well as organizational and skills training in aspects, such as interdisciplinary collaboration, learning capacity, and adaptability.

To learn more, contact Heike Haarmann from Corporate Communications at Festo Didactic SE via phone: +49 (0)711 3467 1290 or email: heike.haarmann@festo.com.

Source & Image: Festo Didactic SE
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