Technology
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Good Crazy and Bad Crazy
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1 min read
My MIG colleague Scott Hirsch recorded a podcast with PodTech and discussed technology-focused startups that drive by the rear-view mirror, open vs. closed networks, and why it’s the crazy-brave people that drive innovation.
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Cost-to-serve
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1 min read
Cost-to-serve is defined as the total supply chain cost from origin to destination, it incorporates such factors as inventory stocking, packaging and re-packaging, shipping, and returns processing. So explains Tim Laseter, Elliot Rabinovich, and Angela Huang in S+B. I’d say products that have poor cost-to-serve profiles, like shoes, just haven’t redesigned their businesses to take…
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Blogs are over
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1 min read
Advertisement, Manhattan.
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Can large companies succeed with social media?
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1 min read
We think so.
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In the past I’ve observed that as processor speed increases, software replaces dedicated hardware. For example, in music or video production programs like GarageBand and Final Cut Pro and a stock Macintosh can replace dedicated rack systems and DSP chips. Now with Web 2.0-ish advances on the Internet, we can go further and say as…
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The wonderful world of concrete
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1 min read
If you’re in Washington D.C., do see the concrete exhibit at the National Building Museum, where you’ll learn that concrete does not have to be heavy, solid, opaque, flat, gray, or ugly. Quite the opposite.
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The Innovate-Dominate Imperative
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1 min read
This essay by Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins offers some useful models of the software industry that could easily apply to similar industries in a state of major transition. This year, many software companies will be busy trying to convert their offerings from products into services. In fact, I would estimate that last year, software-as-a-service…
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We’re trying to underdo the competition…
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1 min read
…No one can really beat us on the low end. It’s just what you need, and nothing you don’t. You’re always going to have more people on the low end who just need a few things.” I love that Jason Fried quote, he’s proving out the worse if better argument. One benefit he didn’t cite…
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Amazon disintermediates the credit card companies
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1 min read
Why bother with micropayments when you can reach right into the bank account? For anyone familiar with European banking, this is an obvious solution. My European friends pay all their bills directly using a standard electronic system and none of them have checkbooks. Checkbooks are an American anachronism.
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Everyware
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1 min read
More from New Challenges… On Saturday night a sub-group — emboldened by a smuggled bottle of wine — sketched out a new manifesto for information architecture. Outward looking, devoid of definitions, accessible to the common person. On Sunday Mr. Greenfield parachutes in to advocate for what could be the impetus to the manifestis’ work: Everyware,…
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iTunes is so, so unfair
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1 min read
The music industry’s lack of innovation ability to even look at business differently is rather sad. Even after Apple showed how digital downloads could be made profitable, they’re pressuring Jobs to change his pricing model, complaining about his ingenuity… A sore point for some music executives is the fact that Apple generates much more money…
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Race to the $100 Laptop
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1 min read
I’m seeing two different approaches to the $100 laptop. MIT is starting from scratch and — as you would guess — focusing on technology to simplify the current platform: …we will get the fat out of the systems. Today’s laptops have become obese. Two-thirds of their software is used to manage the other third, which…
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Linking to the New York Times website
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1 min read
I just discovered two techniques for increasing your online enjoyment of the lovely New York Times: From blogs, links can lead behind the pay wall by creating a weblog-safe link (thanks Jason) If you live here and have a library card, you can access the newspaper’s archives back to 2000 — as well as the…
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Programming language design
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2 min read
For some reason I’m fascinated by programming language design. One reason is that innovation can happen at the tools level, and the tools that fuel software are undeniably important. In the hands of a great author, writing on this topic weaves together the technical, the social and the personal forces at work. One of my…
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New: comments on this blog
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1 min read
Those of you reading this via RSS — 2 out of 3 of you — can now come to the site and post your comments. I became convinced that the emerging practice of applying design thinking to business should be a conversation to hasten progress, so I’ve opened up my blog to discussion. Hope to…