Last week, Jet.com, a new retail outlet created by the founder of diapers.com was launched. It basically offers many household staples for very low prices and what is more, the more you buy, the lower the price goes. The idea is similar to Costco or Sam's Club. Jet.com asks members to pay $50 per year …
Streamlining patent examination
At the NBER Summer Institute there was an interesting panel session on patent reform. One of the issues was the speed and cost of the patent examination process. The usual intuition is that we want this to be as speedy and thorough as possible but that is a goal that is unlikely given budget constraints. …
The Defenestration of Search
[This post was first published at HBR.org on 10th July 2015]. Why aren’t things better? This is something that I often feel these days when searching for information on the internet. And it is especially something I feel when I am searching for products where quality matters. This applies to restaurants, tradespeople, and books, for …
Twenty years of the Commercial Internet
In August 1995, Netscape held its initial public offering and caught the attention of every participant in computing and communications. It was a catalytic event for the commercial Internet, and it started the beginning of a long boom in investment by private firms, households, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists. With the 20th anniversary approaching, it’s time …
Slate's new international paywall seems ill-conceived
Even though I am a regular reader of Slate, I missed this announcement last month that they are putting in a metered paywall for International (i.e., non-US) readers. Like many other news sites, you can have, in this case, 5 free articles a month and for more will have to pay $5 a month for …
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Digitopoly 