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"
Apple’s iPad launch event last week was fairly uneventful. The iPad Air 2 looks impressive and the Retina display iMac even more so. But there will be no queues in front of Apple stores this time around. Indeed, most of the event was filler, perhaps to cover the fact that Apple’s product strategy does not …
Some years ago, what is now called Zooniverse, had the great idea to involve the crowd in assisting in scientific endeavours. It started with the classification of galaxies before moving on to other topics such as the classification of cyclones, the identification of Antarctic penguins and coding weather from shipping logs. This was pure science …
There are lots of criteria that we use to think about why someone should win a Nobel prize. There is creative genius, there are pioneering findings but, in reality, the dominant criteria is impact. The tough issue is usually "impact on what?" Because being at the frontier is difficult, most specialise in their impact. To be …
Alex Blumberg, formerly of This American Life and Planet Money is starting a new business. The business has something to do with creating a great network of podcasts (actually, three episodes in I’m not entirely sure but that is a matter for a future discussion). Naturally he is podcasting his own experience in this and I’ve been …
One of the newest ventures in the Creative Destruction Lab is 'Instaradio.' They have put out an app called RAUR and I have been playing around with it. What RAUR does is offer a dead simple way of broadcasting audio straight from a mobile phone. Basically, you set up an account and then, when you …
A few books have been released recently where entrepreneurs impart their managerial and strategic advice on the world. Of course, they are all successful which means that ultimately they are explaining what they did that made them successful. We should be sceptical. I remember an old Dilbert cartoon with the boss saying something “I’m reading …
Continue reading "Entrepreneurial advice from the horse's mouth"
Dan Ariely of Duke University is a pioneer behavioural economist. But he is also entrepreneurial. His latest little venture is Shortwhale and it solves a problem that many people, especially academics, have: email overload. Here is Ariely’s explanation.The idea is simple. When people you don’t know contact you, it is hard to parse what to do with their …
A couple of things have happened this week regarding the use of voice as a form of communication. First of all, Apple’s new iOS8 allows users to send others short voice messages instead of text messages. Second, today, Ray Ozzie (whom Bill Gates called “one of the five best programmers in the universe”) released a …
Two pieces appeared on Medium in the last couple of days about Amazon; both critical and complimentary in their own way. But put together they reveal a contradiction at the heart of what Amazon is doing in terms of social value.Let me explain. The first piece you should read is by Clay Shirky. When Shirky nails …
Digitopoly 