follow ups

Right after talking about Google wave, I ran across this story about the release of Microsoft bing. I like to use google as an example in classes when I talk about intellectual property ideas. The google search algorithm isn’t patentable, and yet they’ve made a ton of money off of it. But I suspect that […]

impact

There’s an interesting post on the Six Pixels of Separation blog today about metrics for social media. Here’s the problem that is set up: Maybe we have it all wrong (and I’m just as guilty as the next person). Why are we looking at how many people have joined Facebook overall? Why do we care […]

solar business model innovation

I spent a lot of time in my talks this week discussing business model innovation. The main point is that this is often the most powerful form of innovation while also being one of the most overlooked. I ran across a great example of business model innovation today on Kevin Kelly’s blog. One of the […]

you are what you share

There’s a nice post by Lisa Katamaya on Boing Boing Gadgets about coffee in a can. She talks about how popular various forms of a coffee in a can are in Japan, and how they are being promoted as being ‘American’ even though there is nothing like it available in America. I love all the […]

the power of examples

One thing that was really striking up in Cairns is how many Toyota Priuses are on the road. There are a whole lot – led by the taxis. I’d estimate that the Prius makes up about 2/3 of all of the taxis there (including one that’s gone over 500,000 km!). I just did a quick […]

innovation networks

I was thinking again about the discussion here last week about fuzzy concepts – in particular that of networks. In that post, I was trying to get at the value of the network concept for economic analysis. Neil Kay made an interesting point in the comments – which was that you could substitute the word […]

getting ideas to spread

I ran across an interview with David Foster Wallace on Salon from just after Infinite Jest came out. It included this quote about the state of Literature: If you, the writer, succumb to the idea that the audience is too stupid, then there are two pitfalls. Number one is the avant-garde pitfall, where you have […]

persistent economic ties

There’s been a bit of a slow roll through the (mostly) academic blogs discussing a recent paper by Bronnenberg, Dhar & Dube from The Journal of Political Economy called “Brand History, Geography, and the Persistence of Brand Shares”. Here’s the abstract: We document evidence of a persistent “early entry” advantage for brands in 34 consumer […]

the cone of uncertainty

Here’s a really nice talk that Paul Saffo gave for the Long Now Organization up on fora.tv. It’s a bit long (85 minutes in total), but the 30 minutes of questions can be skipped. If you’re in a hurry, hit the link and then go to the menu to watch the sections titled ‘The Cone […]