Yesterday, Apple announced new mobile products: a new iPhone 5 and iPod touch (in their taller modes) and a new iPod nano. Of course, the views on the iPhone to all this ranged from "it's only an incremental improvement, but that's OK it is still leads the field" to "it's only an incremental improvement, Apple …
Does Piracy Harm Sales?
My last post challenged a New York Times op-ed’s view that the media industries should give up fighting piracy. Implicit in the Times editorial’s argument is the idea that piracy has little or no impact on media sales — a view shared by many in the tech community and seeming by some journalists as well. My colleague, …
Black swans and judging entrepreneurial ventures
The ever interesting Paul Graham of Y-Cominbator published another essay yesterday entitles, "Black Swan Farming." No, it isn't about a possible Western Australian agricultural opportunity. Instead, it covers this: The two most important things to understand about startup investing, as a business, are (1) that effectively all the returns are concentrated in a few big …
Continue reading "Black swans and judging entrepreneurial ventures"
Making the case for corporate venturing
Harvard's Josh Lerner has written a new book, The Architecture of Innovation. It is basically an up-to-date recount of what we know about how innovation is encouraged. It is heavily research based but extremely accessible and is a must read for anyone interested in the economics of innovation. The basic thesis of the books is: …
Should fact checking be part of journalism?
Earlier in the year, Arthur Brisbane, then public editor of the New York Times, drew the ire of the Internet for this post: I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about. The answer was a resounding 'yes, and …
Continue reading "Should fact checking be part of journalism?"
Amazon diversifies on the business model
Amazon had its new Kindle announcements today. The news is that prices came down; at least on devices. Basically, everything about Amazon is about getting their devices into people's hands. The baseline Kindle is now just $69. It is still not free and nor is it given away with Amazon prime for reasons I articulated …
Harvard Business Review Press goes DRM Free (and expensive)
Publishers have been slow to adopt DRM free eBooks even though experience in music publishing suggests a natural evolution. To be sure, part of this relates to Amazon's proprietary Kindle format that is involves DRM and that has enlisted major publishers behind it. But there are some big exceptions and some others including TOR books and …
Continue reading "Harvard Business Review Press goes DRM Free (and expensive)"
Is there a market for ideas? Apptopia edition
A little while back, Scott Stern and I wrote a paper that asked "Is there a market for ideas?" The paper has since been published but is also available here. The paper noted that while many ideas are traded there do not appear to be organised markets to facilitate such trading. For patents, there have …
Continue reading "Is there a market for ideas? Apptopia edition"
An eBay shipping/salience experiment
It is August and plenty of my friends have mobile phone contracts up for renewal but want to wait for the new iPhone. In this situation, what they do has hand off to me their brand new iPhone 4S and I put it on eBay for them with the proceeds being put towards a new …
Five shades of grey on Apple-Samsung
The big IP news this week was the verdict in the Apple-Samsung trial. The jury found (mostly) in favour of Apple in its claims that Samsung had copied patented technology. There were many patents that were under consideration but the ones that appear to have been most significant were the ones that related to the …
Digitopoly 