From Nature, The entire field of particle physics is set to switch to open-access publishing, a milestone in the push to make research results freely available to readers. Particle physics is already a paragon of openness, with most papers posted on the preprint server arXiv. But peer-reviewed versions are still published in subscription journals, and publishers …
Kickstarter tries to clarify what it's about
As I have written before, I believe that Kickstarter is a novel and important way of allowing innovators and information creators to ensure against some of the risks associated with upfront investment by obtaining some pre-investment signals of demand. Strictly speaking, those signals were supposed to be financial support but ultimately ended up being, for …
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Apple's big mistake
Regular readers will know that I often are willing to give Apple the benefit of the doubt. But with iOS 6 released today they have actually made a mistake that makes you wonder "whether Steve would have allowed it." The mistake was to drop Google Maps and replace it with an in-house Maps app with …
'Smart' lightbulbs
I like seeing the ideas coming through Kickstarter. Some are crazy while others are pedestrian. But one just caught my eye and I thought it was worth blogging about. It is LIFX that is billed as a reinvention of light bulb. Basically, these people wondered what could happen if you put WiFi connectivity in each …
Apple's optimal product failure rate
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, …
Big Data's Management Revolution
Big data has the potential to revolutionize management. Simply put, because of big data, managers can measure, and hence know, radically more about their businesses, and directly translate that knowledge into improved decision making and performance. Of course, companies such as Google and Amazon are already doing this. After all, we expect companies that were …
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 …
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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: …
Confusion in copyright and video streaming
Confused by the latest technology and businesses in video streaming? Goodness knows, I find it hard to keep up with which innovative streaming business is illegal, and which is not. Well, along comes James Grimmelmann to clear up which is which and why it is this way. In case you missed it, let me recommend …
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Digitopoly 