Competition in the Digital Age
Epiphany plays an outsized role in the reductionist two-step model of invention. Step one is when an idea pops into an inventor’s head, and step two is when the invention spreads in an economy over time. This model is misleading in numerous ways that would take a book to enumerate. Today’s column focuses on step …
Continue reading "Spillovers, Bottlenecks, and More Invention After Invention"
It is that time of year again: Time to look back at information technology in 2024 and make light of it. As with prior year-in-reviews, this one will be arranged like an award ceremony. There are three criteria for the dozen awards given out this year:• The award must be for something involving digital technology.• …
What happened in the world of IT? Who deserves notoriety for their behavior? It is time to review 2019, and, while we are at it, make a mockery of the most noteworthy. After all, the world is already messed up, so at least let's have a bit of fun. Reminder: The awards generate no money, …
Paul Graham famously said: The cutoff in investors' heads is 32 ... after 32 they tend to be a little skeptical. That apparently is the consensus view on what age you want the founders to be in order to generate successful returns. What does the data say? According to a new paper by Pierre Azoulay, …
As Snapchat (SNAP) nears its IPO, analysts have been pouring over its public documents. Ben Thompson found this interesting bit: Our strategy is to invest in product innovation and take risks to improve our camera platform. We do this in an effort to drive user engagement, which we can then monetize through advertising. We use …
What did Facebook have that Twitter did not? Ben Thompson thinks that it was focus on the news feed and not exploiting it when Twitter had the lead on mobile. He argues that failure has constrained it to this very day and appears to be pessimistic that there is anything Twitter can do to recover. …
Yesterday, the folks at Andreessen-Horowitz released a slide deck on their reasoning why "this time it is different" on tech funding and bubbles. It is worth a little of your time but here are the take aways: The amount of money going into tech start-ups is still much less than it was in the dot.com …
Continue reading "The Shift from Public to Private Markets in Tech Funding"
We have seen Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms emerge as a means of demand discovery. In those platforms, consumers commit to purchasing a new product and so incur some real costs. However, Mark Rober has embarked on a different route for his better microwave idea. First, take a look at that idea. It is a …
There is often lots of talk in American politics about the ‘real America.’ Suffice it to say, implicit in that is that everyone wants to be real and so even an assertion to the contrary is an insult. Truth be told, however, what many regional and local governments are interested in is whether their location …
Since Paul Krugman wandered into my field of economics today, I thought this might be an opportune moment to recount various things I have said about Amazon and its dispute with Hachette over the last few months. Krugman’s problem: Amazon has too much power, plain and simple. Well, it isn’t that plain or simple.First, if Amazon has …
Continue reading "Amazon: it’s not the power, it’s the lost focus"
Digitopoly 