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What Is Real-Time Speech to Text and How Does It Benefit Businesses?

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StrategyDriven Innovation Article | What Is Real-Time Speech to Text and How Does It Benefit Businesses?

If you are familiar with simultaneous interpreting service, real-time speech-to-text is somewhat similar. In simultaneous interpreting, the interpreter allows the speaker to speak first before starting the interpretation after a few seconds’ delay. Real-time speech-to-text accurately transcribes the words in a spoken language into text a few moments after its delivery.

Real-time speech-to-text is a general term used to define the accommodation wherein auditory information and other spoken words are translated into text at the same time. In the past a transcriber types the information they hear and the text is displayed on a screen so consumers can read it easily. Today, professional real-time speech-to-text service solutions do the process automatically, with AI assistance and human transcribers and editors working together to provide high quality and accurate transcription immediately.

There are simpler speech-to-text apps available for PC and mobile phones. Some work like dictation application, while others allow users to say the text instead of typing it and send it through SMS or email. Some apps are useful for note taking.

Benefits of speech-to-text solutions to people and businesses

People who are deaf or hard of hearing can get information faster because they can read what they need to know. Businesses stand to gain many benefits from using real-time speech-to-text solutions. They can either buy the program and implement it themselves or hire a provider on a per-need basis. Either way, the technology offers several benefits, such as competitive advantage, increased efficiency in day-to-day operation, and enhanced customer experience. The program can collect data as well, which can be used for data analysis.

Here are some of the key benefits:

  • Communication becomes easier. Handwritten notes that are illegible will no longer be a problem.
  • The turnaround time for documents, such as minutes of the meeting, seminar, discussion groups, forum, conference or lectures is quicker.
  • The increased efficiency of the work force saves time. It also reduces paperwork.
  • It allows employees to be flexible. They can dictate while on the go.
  • It allows employees to immediately share files across different devices.
  • The system allows for fewer mistakes. The program accurately and reliably transcribes what has been said.

Aside from the above, certain businesses and organizations also benefit from real-time speech-to-text program, such as those conducting live events and productions, which may include the following:

  • Live podcasts, webinars and live video feeds
  • Speaking engagements, conferences and events
  • Training sessions, meetings and phone calls
  • Briefings, announcements and speeches

As mentioned earlier, real-time speech-to-text application helps you communicate with people who are hearing-impaired. They can access and enjoy your live events and media presentations with transcripts and captions that are easy to read. Further, you provide them with information with correct grammar, spelling and punctuation.

With the support of artificial intelligence (AI), you can monitor the quality of customer support calls in real time.

A real-time speech-to-text provider can be vital for those engaged in corporate training and learning, media production, education, legal transcription, and court reporting.

The thing to keep in mind is that the real-time transcription program works in conjunction with professional transcriptionists and editors to make sure the transcription is accurate.

The Idea Is Not Enough

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StrategyDriven Innovation Article | The Idea Is Not EnoughWhen I talk to aspiring startuppers, I realize they have fallen a little for the myth of a winning idea. While it is true that there must be an idea at the base of the creation of a new company, it is also true that it is now almost impossible to invent something new. What makes the difference is putting the idea into practice.

I think this is a more current, less naïve and definitely more complex concept in the sense that an idea may be brilliant, but if it is the wrong time, placed in the wrong market, by the wrong team, it will not go anywhere. Just as there are less interesting ideas, but they are put into practice so well that they can achieve exceptional results. Rather than having the idea of the century, the real advantage is having the resilience to be able to put it into practice in the right way.

Thanks to the experiences I have had so far, I have realized that even potential investors see it that way and, rather than just evaluating the idea itself, they wonder if those in front of them are able to realize it. They generally do not care if it is a sensational novelty, or whether all the numbers add up, or if the business plan is perfect, because they invest in people. That is what happened to me, Stefano and Marco when we looked for investors for our new venture, Foorban – they wanted to meet all three of us to see if we were really the right team to turn that idea into a business.

When they asked me where we got our inspiration from for Foorban, a lunch delivery service, I always feel a bit like laughing because we copied the business model of a New York startup called Maple… which failed dramatically in just two years! Maple arose from an idea from restaurateur and entrepreneur David Chang and debuted in Manhattan in the summer of 2015, offering a high level of service with gourmet lunches cooked in a dedicated restaurant and delivered to the customer in a quarter of an hour. Maple was a huge success; they managed to make US $20 million sales in a year, but then they went bankrupt. The problem was that, in an attempt to win over the whole market, they had lowered the price of their dishes to US $9. Of course, it was an economically unsustainable decision. With a business like that, where the raw material costs more than that of competitors who offer a more standard product, and with the costs associated with delivery in an area like Manhattan, it was unthinkable to enter into a price struggle – they could not win. In fact, at the third round of financing, investors refused to continue to bankroll it.

Maple’s story contains various lessons, such as that you need to have the correct positioning and understand exactly who your target audience is. It is clear that such a high-end product should not be offered to the masses, but to those who are more sensitive to the quality and healthiness of the product and who are willing to spend a little more.

The most important lesson of all is this – an idea may be right, but afterwards you also have to do everything else right, because every stage of creating a new business has its own perils.

About the Author

This guest post is adapted from CREATE UNIQUENESS: How To Turn A Passion Into A Business by Riccardo Pozzoli. Pozzoli is a global entrepreneur; he has co-founded eight companies in the past ten years and is Creative Director for Condé Nast Italias Social Academy.

For more information please visit https://www.koganpage.com/product/create-uniqueness-9780749497385

Different Ways to Promote Creativity in the Workplace

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StrategyDriven Innovation Article | Different Ways to Promote Creativity in the WorkplaceWhen it comes to the workplace, people often emphasize traditional themes such as productivity and collaboration. However, there are many other valuable traits that employees can bring to the office and that managers should embrace. One of the most underrated features that you should promote in your workplace is creativity. Creativity can have a multitude of benefits for you and your workers, such as increased output and a higher sense of enthusiasm. Here are some simple but effective ways to foster creativity among your employees.

Give Employees Room to Explore

You’ll never know what your team is capable of if you don’t give them the chance to test their boundaries. To truly let your employees thrive, give them plenty of space to explore new opportunities and ask new questions. Engaging in this form of self-discovery allows your employees to have a sense of freedom while doing their jobs. Always be open to their suggestions and encourage them to propose new ideas. While not every attempt will be successful, each one can give your team a valuable learning experience that has the potential to help them thrive.

Use the Right Tools

The tools that your company utilizes on a day-to-day basis ultimately define its approach to creativity in the workplace. In order to make the most of the tools and technology that your employees use, make sure to confirm that they foster creative thinking in every way. It’s always a good idea to regularly evaluate your company’s technology to ensure that it’s facilitating your employees’ work as much as possible. From updated devices to new workflow automation software, making use of the proper tools can give your team more space to explore their creativity.

Celebrate Diversity

If you’re looking for a way to naturally incorporate creativity into your team, try to pay attention to the employees themselves. Members of diverse teams are much more likely to bring a variety of thoughts, opinions and suggestions to the table. This wide array of ideas can feed the overall creativity in your workplace and increase everyone’s enthusiasm as a result. Whether an employee has a suggestion about a project she’s working on or a proposal regarding the new Miratech software, you never know what kinds of ideas you’ll encounter when you emphasize diversity.

Don’t be hesitant about exploring the creative potential of your team at work. If you embrace this valuable trait, you can watch your employees thrive in a variety of ways.

How Sustainable Innovation is Changing the Face of Business

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StrategyDriven Innovation Article | How Sustainable Innovation is Changing the Face of Business | Sustainable InnovationThe climate crisis has been going on for decades, but the issue has only become a contentious one in the last few years due to huge public backlash against companies and governments alike. There is no room for debate on the issue, either. A contentious study has estimated that we have wiped out 60% of wildlife since 1970. Over 200,000 acres of rainforest are burned every day, plastics have become so pervasive they now exist in every fish tested, and in turn in our own digestive systems.

The earth overshoot day, which documents how many resources the earth can resupply in a given year, is getting shorter. In 2018, it was August 1st. In 1970, it was January 1st, meaning that in less than 50 years we went from using resources that could be replenished, to requiring 1.7 Earths to sustain our consumption.

Businesses in all industries must take note and must take action, and with these top innovations leading the way the future is indeed looking brighter.

The Rise of Sustainable Innovation

Sustainable innovation has arisen for two main reasons:

Public Awareness

In some cases referred to as the “Attenborough Effect,” the public is now massively aware of how their consumption is affecting the planet. After the airing of Blue Planet, a huge outcry over single-use plastics was resounded throughout the world. To date, it is estimated that there has been a 53% reduction of single-use plastics, and many countries around the world have banned or limited the use of plastic for disposable purposes.

Environmental Need

The environment can simply not handle it. Without change companies will die out and so too will entire communities.

Top Sustainable Innovations to Be Aware Of

That is why all businesses must be aware of the sustainable innovations occurring around the world. That way you can both partner with the right companies that are leading the way to a greener future, and get an idea of what you can personally do for the planet with your own company. Balancing the environment and profits can be a challenge, but when you take in the fact that over-consumption might put you entirely out of business, you have no choice.

Innovative Materials Changing Fashion

Fashion is a massive industry with many subsects, such as accessories, shoes, and handbags. The practice has been so damaging to the environment that entire lakes have disappeared, thousands have died, millions are underpaid or work in forced labor conditions, rivers run bright with chemical dyes, and much more.

Fashion is disastrous for the environment, right down to the cotton production that fuels the industry. That is why many innovative textiles are coming onto the scene that aims to use more ecologically friendly plants or waste.

1. Hemp

Hemp is a very durable material that looks and feels similar to linen, but is much easier to produce and less demanding on the environment.

2. Nettle

Stinging nettles are often considered to be pests, but nettle is enjoying a reemergence as a popular textile. People have been using it to create a durable fabric for over 2000 years, and unlike hemp can legally be grown around the world.

3. Ground Coffee

Used coffee grounds are often considered to be a waste product, but with recent innovations in Taiwan, coffee grounds are now turning into fibers. They are created with a polymer, and then spun into a yarn.

4. Pineapple Fabric

The vegan, waste-friendly alternative to leather is made from pineapple. Other innovations have also produced great results with mushrooms. Pineapple, however, has been tested and is very durable.

Circular Economy Innovation

The circular economy is essentially a system that reuses waste rather than sending anything to be recycled or to fill up a landfill. Plastic bottles, for example, can be recycled, but as their quality degrades they would not qualify as a circular item. On the other hand using coffee grounds to make fabric, which then has another life cycle of its own that can decompose safely or be remade into new fabric, is.

Innovations in Agriculture

The issue of agriculture is a big one. How do we realistically intend to feed 9 billion people and growing? We will need to adopt new practices that push farming away from the countryside (and far away from deforestation) and instead:

5. Underground Production

Underground production will use LED lights and unused urban areas like subway tunnels to produce food. Though this is not enough to feed a city, it is certainly a good start. What needs to be pushed further is the adoption of personal gardens in cities, from vertical gardens to balcony gardens.

6. Power of AI

Using sensors, AI, and machine learning agriculture should theoretically be able to optimize production and reduce water consumption and pesticide use.

7. Use of LED

LED is paving the way for increased crop growth rate, allowing more to be produced in a single crop yielding. These LED lights from Nordic Lights are designed to provide the best possible vision and clarity to ensure maximum efficiency and minimal distractions. LED lights will also be instrumental in urban farming and can help reduce the amount of land that will need to be cleared for agriculture in the future. You can read more here.

Reusing Waste to Build Our Cities

Though not a perfect solution, many are attempting to give plastic a new home in an industrial building. Low-cost homes are being made out of plastic bottles and other building materials, roads are being made out of single-use plastics, and even fabrics are being created out of recycled plastic (different than polyester). Using plastic like this is not a complete solution, but it does give more direction on how to reuse these indestructible materials.

Recapturing Water

Water consumption needs to be reduced dramatically, which is why water recycling is paramount for sustainable innovation. Capturing water already used in production and reusing it again and again is the best way to limit the amount of fresh water taken from the environment.

Use of Sustainable Energy

Wind farms are now more cost effective to build than a coal plant for the first time in history, but to truly rely on sustainable energy more innovative methods will need to be produced. Companies and individuals alike will then need to actively choose to use sustainable energy producers to further incentivize dirty power companies to go green.

Your Company Is A Well Of Ideas – Stop Poisoning It

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StrategyDriven Innovation Article | Your Company Is A Well Of Ideas – Stop Poisoning It | Innovation For The FatiguedI work with creativity and innovation in companies, and I’m frustrated. There are many reasons for this, with my famous impatience being near the top of the list, but one things stands above the rest. This is the insistence of companies and CEOs that their organizations lack ideas. I hear this over and over again, yet it is never true. Not in their organizations, and not in yours.

The fact of the matter is, I’ve never met an organization that lacks ideas. Not one, and I’ve worked with some of the most backwards bureaucracies in the world, and with innovation in North Korea to boot. Be it a Fortune 50 corporation, or a small, local company, the same holds. They all claim they have a problem with generating enough ideas, and they’re all wrong. They already have all the ideas they could even need, and so do you.

You see, the problem is never idea generation. Ever. I can teach a monkey to run a decent idea generation workshop, and although it would make people all creative and stuff, it wouldn’t impact your bottom line in the slightest. Because it isn’t more ideas you need, it’s not killing the ones you already have. In my research, I’ve found a myriad of ways through which companies kill ideas. Bad processes is one, a lack of leadership is another, but the number one idea killer in the world is one that gets little attention – not having a culture in which ideas can take root, but which kills them through not caring.

This can play out in a number of ways. It might be that an eager young employee suggests a new way of working, but only elicits yawns in response. It might be the way in which people who aren’t seen as “innovators” get marginalized and feel that their ideas are not listened to. It might be a lack of psychological safety, where the company is filled to the brim with ideas, but where no-one dares give voice to them. In all these cases, a toxic innovation culture has effectively killed innovation before it even has had the chance to present its first, weak saplings.

What leaders need to do is not just to demand people innovate, or encourage people to “think outside of the box” (a phrase I hate with burning passion). The first task of the innovation leader is to ensure that the culture into which ideas might come is fertile ground for them, rather than a place where only the few get listened to and where ideas are more likely to get shrugged or yawned at than engaged with. You might already have a well of ideas, but if the water is poisoned, it won’t help you a whit.

So before you have your next creativity workshop or innovation initiative, make sure you’ve audited your culture for the things ideas need to flourish. Is it respectful, to ideas and people, and is the conversation civil? Does it exhibit psychological safety, and encourage diverse ideas and conversations? Is it inclusive or exclusive – does everyone get invited to play? Is your culture one of generosity, of give and take, or is it every person and idea for themselves? Unless you are prepared to reflect over such things, it rarely matters what kind of innovation management you have in place, and all those innovation consultants will be for naught. For just like culture might eat strategy for breakfast, it can have a ravenous appetite for ideas, killing them outright at the very first moment they come out of hiding.

So don’t complain about how your company, or your team, lacks ideas. It doesn’t. It never did. Complain about the culture that kills your ideas before they come to fruition, and then start thinking about what you might do to change the situation. Make sure people stop poisoning the well, and you’ll never go without ideas again. You might get a nicer, more civil organization to boot.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Expert Contributor | Alf Rehn | Innovation for the FatiguedAlf Rehn, author of Innovation for the Fatigued: How to Build a Culture of Deep Creativity, is recognized as a global thought-leader in the field of innovation and creativity. Rehn is Professor of Innovation, Design, and Management at the University of Southern Denmark, sits on numerous boards of directors, is a bestselling author, and serves as a strategic advisor for hot new startups to Fortune 500 companies.

For more information, please visit KoganPage.