Competition in the Digital Age
... at least for cars. Uber is well-known for having pushed autonomous vehicles. And when it first floated the idea, somewhat bemused onlookers wondered how this fit with their short-term goals of attracting drivers. But when Uber set up a major R&D facility in Pittsburgh -- gutting Carnegie Mellon's computer science department -- it seemed …
Continue reading "Neither Uber nor Lyft believe sharing is the future"
It is not as if my wife and I intentionally seek to go off the grid. Rather, we possess a taste for mountains, National Parks, and the geologic oddities of the western US. As it happens, these type of locations tend to lack full support for the modern Internet. These locations also drive my teenage children …
Continue reading "On and off the grid – with digitally literate teenagers"
[This post was originally published on HBR Blogs on 25 July 2016] Last week Elon Musk released the second installment of Tesla’s Master Plan. The first installment had been written in 2006. It outlined Tesla’s automotive strategy and it has been pretty much followed to the letter. The second installment moves Tesla beyond the traditional …
Apple announced two major changes to the App Store for its various software platforms (iPhone, iPad and OSX). The first would be to allow search based advertising. The second would be to reform subscription pricing. These are large changes as I will explain below. Search-based Advertising A little appreciated fact is that apps themselves have …
We don't speak of it very often but economists face a fundamental challenge with respect to innovation: if innovation is something no one has anticipated, then the (Savage) axoims upon which we base our rational choice decision-making cannot apply. Let me explain. Decision-making is all about actions and their consequences. Leonard Savage created the framework …
Continue reading "Adult Colouring Books Remind us that Innovation lies outside economics"
Emma Jacobs has a nice review of The Disruption Dilemma in the Financial Times. It is always pleasing to read that "[t]his is an interesting and well-written, pithy book dealing with one of the buzziest concepts in business." However, right at the end, she took issue with one thing: However, it is strange that Gans …
Marco Arment had an interesting post yesterday on whether Apple is in trouble because of the investments of others, particularly, Google, in AI. He wondered if it would be disrupted in the same way BlackBerry was but Apple itself. Amazon, Facebook, and Google — especially Google — have all invested heavily in big-data web services …
SSRN -- the social science paper repository -- is being acquired by Elsevier. SSRN has always been a for-profit entity and so it shouldn't be a surprise that this has happened. Put simply, there is a commercial rationale to this especially given that it is hard for smaller scale entities -- and SSRN despite its …
[This post initially appeared on HBR.org] For a long time, Facebook Messenger seemed to be secondary to Facebook’s core business – a product feature rather than something more. So when Facebook bought WhatsApp for an extraordinary $19 billion, it seemed like WhatsApp would end up being Facebook’s messaging platform of choice. But on April 14, …
Continue reading "Why Facebook Messenger is a big deal for customer service"
Last week, the Strategy Research Initiative organised a research seminar using Harvard Business School's HBX platform. This is the same platform HBS now use to deliver online courses. It was an interesting experience but as is usually the case with these things, it highlighted as much about what was missing as what was there. Let …
Continue reading "Online Research Seminars: First Impressions"
Digitopoly 