2011 Sep 16

What Showers Say About Europeans/Asians vs Americans

I love America. One of my favourite books starts that way, John Keegan's "Fields of Battle: The Wars For North America." One of the things I love about America is the incredible drive for entrepreneurship, the idea that if you have an idea, well, follow it all the way through. You can be innovative in any market, anywhere (assuming government hasn't enforced some monopoly), and if what you have to sell is a better product/market fit, including better customer service (see "

2011 Sep 15

Angry about Angry Birds - Time for Some Anger Management

The Atlantic had a funny article - well, funny to me, perhaps not to everyone - that Angry Birds, the game, is "costing" American businesses alone $1.5BN in lost wages and/or productivity per year, on average. The math is very entertaining, and makes some assumptions, which they themselves admit are assumptions. Either way, they come up with the rough $1.5BN lost wages figure. Whether the assumptions are off by 33% up - and the real number is $1BN - or 50% down - and the real number is $2BN - or any other error, the problem here is not technical, i.

2011 Sep 13

Wishful Thinking Does Not Make Facts

We all wish we could wish our wishes into reality - yes, that was intentional - but when a large company starts doing it, short the stock. Apparently, Martin Fichter, the president of HTC America is convinced HTC is about to dominate the market because, well, iPhones are "a little less cool." The story is on geekwire. I am not quite sure how you scientifically measure cool. But this is clearly Fichter wishing iPhone were less cool, so that more people would buy his (obviously cooler, in his not-so-humble opinion) HTC phones.

2011 Sep 6

Yahoo Have Too Many "Yahoos"?

In a piece of good news, Yahoo finally got rid of Carol Bartz. She had been brought in to turn around the ailing company, one-time icon of the Internet about which it was said (including, supposedly, to the Google founders), "search is over." Unfortunately, the situation never improved, and it seemed clear for many, at least on the outside, that she wasn't going to be the one to save it.

2011 Sep 3

Nature abhors a vacuum - if you don't fill in the pieces, they will do it for you

I had an interesting insight a few days ago, one that I have had before. I have always loved the phrase "Nature Abhors a Vacuum". While in the physics term, it normally means that if you have a vacuum, i.e. lack of anything, nearby physical elements will expand to fill it (generally limited to gases and, to some extent, liquids, but this is not a physics lesson and my undergrad engineering was almost 2 decades ago), this phrase has particular application in the psychology, and hence business, realm.

2011 Aug 17

A Call to Arms!

It is about time someone with more heft and readership than I have said it. I recommend everyone read this. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-rid-of-patent-trolls-for-good-2011-8 Good for Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry! As a quick example: it is pretty clear that a large part of Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility for $12.5BN is for their patent portfolio. Google could easily invent anything relevant to their current and future needs; but you cannot create the legal protection - protection money?

2011 Aug 15

Books on the Web

Continuing our previous article, Amazon, with much fanfare, released their html5 offline Kindle app, http://read.amazon.com. It has been heavily reviewed, obviating the need for another extensive review. Suffice it to say that the book addict in me loved the platform (yes, I tested it offline), while the engineer in me loved the design and engineering. It actually took my wife a few moments to realize we were in a Web browser, and not in the Kindle app.

2011 Aug 12

Newspapers on a Tablet... and Books on the Web

Yesterday, I bought a subscription to the WSJ Tablet Edition.It was ~$18/month, and includes simultaneous access from three devices (any combination of iPad, iPhone, iPod, Android) and Web access. It includes archives for 7 days offline, and access to the US, Europe and Asia editions. Compared to the $28 I was paying for the local copy of the WSJ Europe, it is a bargain, and means I have it whenever I travel.

2011 Jul 25

Which Type of People Are Really Innovative

Steve Blank had a great article today on how Silicon Valley changed the very culture of business, wherein engineers and scientists led the business. One of Steve's main points is how, like in research labs there is no penalty for making mistakes, similarly in the market, these entrepreneurial firms used the same culture to experiment (in Steve's language "pivot" while "searching for a customer"), until eventually finding sustainable business models.

2011 Jul 19

It Is All Psychology - and People Aren't Rational

Steve Blank has a very funny story posted on his blog, about when he was raising a round of money for E.piphany from Infinity Capital. He wanted a $10MM valuation, they insisted it was too high and everyone would laugh at them. In the end, they came back with... $9.99MM. The rest of the story - dust, walls and pictures - is quite entertaining, but the interesting lesson is about the difference between $9.