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When he was 17 years old, Arne Hillerns moved from his small village in Northern Germany to spend a year in Wausau, Wisconsin. For a brief period of time, he felt like the foreign exchange high school student that he was: “People look at you [and think,] Who’s that kid? he recalls. Just a year prior, Hillerns had discovered skateboarding, and the skate scene in Wisconsin was buzzing. Within three days or so, he had found a community of skateboarders. Skating made me so much more open in my personality and gave me confidence, he says. It was a very easy entry to this new world for me. Fast-forward 25 years, and Hillernss passion for skateboarding has spread across almost every continent. Hillerns is now the founder of an NGO called Make Life Skate Life, which works to make skating accessible to underserved youth all over the world. Over the past decade, his team has designed and built more than a dozen skateparks in countries including Laos, the Philippines, Ethiopia, Brazil, and Morocco. [Photo: courtesy Make Life Skate Life] Earlier this month, they completed the first-ever skate park in Baghdad, Iraq. Five years in the makingthe longest it’s ever taken them to build oneBaghdad Skatepark features a variety of ramps and obstacles tailored to people of all skill levels. One ramp was even designed to look like a magic carpet (which locals are yet to paint) as a nod to the 2019 Disney movie, Aladdin, which is set in a city based on Baghdad. (Even Disney’s 1992 animated Aladdin was initially to take place in Baghdad, but for the First Gulf War, which broke out in 1991.) [Photo: courtesy Make Life Skate Life] We like to have local elements that represent the culture or the country, Hillerns tells me. In Taghazout, a coastal city in the south of Morocco, they incorporated a quintessentially Moroccan arched door. In Inukjuak, an Inuit community in Northern Quebec, they built a structure resembling an igloo. Hillerns founded Make Life Skate Life in 2013, but the seeds for the NGO were sown a year prior. By then, Hillerns had returned to Germany, where he’d spent five years looking up how to mix concrete and ultimately transforming a post-industrial site in Hanover into what became one of Europe’s biggest DIY skateparks. In 2012, he set off for India in an attempt to share his learningsand try to replicate the community he had built. Not everyone has the possibility of skating in front of their house, he says. For me, it comes down to having a space to skate. Bangalore [Photo: courtesy Make Life Skate Life] After crisscrossing the country looking for skateboarders, Hillerns and the two friends he was traveling with finally came across a group in Bangalore who had found a patch of land but didn’t know how to turn it into a skatepark. With Hillerns’s helpand funding from Levi’s SkateboardingIndias first free skatepark was born. (Due to legal issues in the residential area where it was built, the skatepark shuttered a year after it opened, but Holystoked, the local group, has since constructed more than 20 skateparks in the country.) After that first build in Bangalore, Hillerns founded Make Life Skate Life, and projects grew organically in places like La Paz, Bolivia, where the team built the city’s first skatepark and Amman, Jordan. Hillerns says there is no set formula for the way each skatepark evolves, but the action plan is usually the same: find a skating community, find funds, find land. [Photo: courtesy Make Life Skate Life] An eager community is the easiest to find. (Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, for example, has a thriving skate scene and it is where Hillerns hopes to go next.) Funds often come from a combination of crowdfunding, corporate sponsorships, and help from local embassies. In the case of Baghdad, the park was financedwith the help of the German and French Embassies, as well as a local NGO that did a round of fundraising a few years ago. But the original idea for the park never materialized because they couldn’t find land. Which brings us to the land problem. [Photo: courtesy Make Life Skate Life] A typical skatepark is only as big as two-to-four tennis courts, but that much land isn’t always easy to find, especially in parts of the city that are easy to access. Some years ago, the team struggled to find such spot in Laos, but ended up making an arrangement with a private individual who agreed to let them build a skatepark on his own land and open it to the public. They also tried building a skatepark in Kathmandu, Nepal, but the project fell through because, again, they couldn’t find land. In Baghdad, the team’s search could’ve been met with the same fate, but Hillerns says they refused to give up. In 2018, Make Life Skate Life built Iraq’s first skatepark in Sulaymaniyah, 165 miles north of Baghdad. Suli Skatepark was such a success that kids living in Baghdad spent six hours on a bus just to go skate there. This motivated Hillerns and the team them to keep looking. [Photo: courtesy Make Life Skate Life] Hillerns blames expensive land and corruption for delaying the process. Eventually, the team managed to secure a patch of land on the Ministry of Youth and Sports complex near Al-Shaab International Stadium. The city required security guards on site to ensure that nobody misinterpreted the skatepark for something else; but it is well-located, and in a city where so-called third places are virtually nonexistent. It’s a place that Iraqi kids can make their own. Now, Baghdad’s first skatepark has made international headlines, and Hillerns is hopeful it will help change the way Baghdad is portrayed in the media. He dreams of a world where, much like foodies travel to eat, and cyclists travel to bike, skaters would travel to skate. You wouldnt think of Baghdad as a tourist destination, but it’s very easy to get into the country and its a city like every other city, he says. A skating pilgrimage to Baghdad would’ve been unthinkable even a month ago. Now, it’s a distinct possibility.
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E-Commerce
Just a couple of years ago, pundits were warning of streamings demise. From Netflix to Spotify, these companies were burning through cash. How could they keep operating? Now, almost all of the streamers have made it to positive profits. Netflix is the envy of the entertainment industry, while its underlings like Disney+ and Max have also turned around their losses. Last Tuesday, Spotify shares jumped 13% after the company announced its first full year of profitability. There are still stragglers, but on the whole, streaming has formed itself into a successful business model. Theres a lesson here: For emerging tech, theres value in patience. It took streaming over a decade to get it right, to effectively combine user growth and ad sales in a way that manifested profits. We should expect the same from all of our tech innovators. How streaming became profitable In the late 2010s, things werent looking positive for Netflix. Sure, they were making positive profits, but their debt was staggering. The company had amassed $15 billion in long-term debt by the end of 2020; compared to quarterly profits of just around $1 billion, Netflix seemed ready to capsize. CNNs headline at the time: Netflix is burning through cash. This cant last forever. Now, everyone wants to be Netflix. Their profit margin is now 22%, earning $8.71 billion last year in profits (from some $39 billion in revenue). Remarkably, the business is expanding. They added a record-breaking 19 million subscribers in the fourth quarter of 2024, mostly thanks to the live fight between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. And their ad tier, which used to be a tiny subsidiary of their business, is now scaling rapidly. Its good to be in the business of Netflix. The smaller streamers, once the butt of Wall Streets jokes, are now reaching profitability. Max eked out its first positive profit of $103 million in 2023. Compare that to 2020, where WarnerMedia blamed their $1.2 billion in losses on investments in the streamer. Disneys streaming division, which compromises both Disney+ and Hulu, just reached their second straight quarter of profitability. In 2022, the division was losing the company over $3 billion. Now, Spotify has joined the club. For years, Spotify failed to put up positive profits. Their losses reached a peak in the second quarter of 2023, when Spotify lost about $256 million. The Wired headline from that year: Spotify is Screwed. Now, theyve reached a full year of positive profits. The virtue of patience with emerging tech The sheer scale of money lost made streamers an easy target. In 2020, when Netflix was saddled with some $15 billion in long-term debt, the company also had a marketcap of $238.89 billion. How could we so blindly trust a company that was burning through money? But these are long-term bets, and the bets eventually paid off. The same could be true for dozens of emerging tech fields of today. Look at AI. OpenAI, the golden child of the industry, lost $5 billion in 2024. And they keep taking on more money, most recently $6.6 billion in new investments and a $4 billion line of credit. How can we justify this? But AI companies (OpenAI chief among them) are betting on the future. AI might not be profitable now, but it will be. Its hard to trust OpenAI CEO Sam Altman when he makes these grand claims. But, if streaming is any indication, he could be right. The tech market demands patience; not just months of it, but years.
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E-Commerce
Its no surprise that artificial intelligence is transforming the way we learn, but it also has the potential to add a sprinkling of magic to on-the-job training. Turning the ordinary into the extraordinary is especially beneficial in the skilled trades. Were already seeing social media inspire the next generation of tradespeople, and AI-based learning programs can help attract, develop, and retain young talent. In the U.S., hiring for skilled roles, including electricians, industrial machinery workers, plumbers, and HVAC technicians, could be more than 20 times the projected annual increase in new jobs from 2022 to 2032. The current pipeline of skilled trades training cant keep up with the demand for workers, and a significant percentage of high school students interested in training programs find themselves on a waiting list. Employer investments in training and upskilling programs are critical in closing the labor gap. AI training requires a foundational knowledge We have already seen that AI is effective for advanced learning. It synthesizes information, translates it, and creates more personalized learning experiences. However, leveraging AIs power hinges on one critical ingredienta strong digital foundation. This is where many employers will fall short. They have traditionally relied on job shadowing, the occasional in-person classroom training, or limited online compliance training. Further, there is a common misconception that skilled workers will be able to learn in the field with an AI-enabled device as their primary means of information. These devices are useful for troubleshooting or serving as a quick reference tool, but they should only be used in conjunction with substantive foundational knowledge. The cognitive load while working makes it incredibly challenging to learn efficiently and effectively. Imagine being in a setting with safety risks, noise, and multiple distractions competing for your attention. At the same time, youre supposed to be taking in new information, acting on it, and retaining it. But, if that AI-supported in-the-field training was combined with a robust AI-driven digital foundational program, thats where the magic starts to happen. The most effective training takes place when employees have time to internalize the material, reflect on it, and review it. The need to pair AI with people A digital foundation that combines strategic assessments, core course material, bite-size learning, and digital simulations with real-world scenarios can provide the hands-on learning that is essential in the skilled trades. Whats more, all of this can be done in a safe, controlled environment. AI can communicate big ideas and take on the role of mentor, highlighting what is important, assessing skills, offering support, and providing insights into strengths and weaknesses. AI can serve as a personal learning guide, but it can’t provide emotional support and won’t replace people. Instead, great teachers will use AI along with digital learning to make their emotional interaction more useful. AI is advancing at a rapid pace, and many CEOs are asking themselves what their organization should be doing with AI and when to jump in. The answer is to jump in now. The consequences of not adopting digital learning will only get more severe the longer they wait. Learning is essential for every role and at every age, from the Gen Zers who are increasingly skipping college to existing employees requesting upskilling tailored to their specific needs. A digital foundation is the magicor missing ingredientthat lays the groundwork for CEOs to address labor shortages, reduce risk, and increase operational efficiency within their workforce. Doug Donovan is founder and CEO of Interplay Learning.
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E-Commerce
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