Competition
Ben Horowitz: High Tech’s New Andy Grove
If Silicon Valley is rich, how come it ain’t smart? How is it that we consistently generate innovative companies but rarely produce management thinkers of consequence? Part of the problem is that many technology leaders are neurotic. They need to be: nobody really knows what is going to work and your idea will most likely [...]
Visa, Mastercard, or iPhone?
Google and Apple will soon compete with Visa and Mastercard to process your payments in stores, restaurants, and online. Both companies will be pulled into payment processing because both have built two valuable networks: one of developers who build apps, the other of consumers who buy them. But the developer network has diminishing returns, whereas [...]
Celebrating Cheap Crap from Africa
For reasons best known to her, my loving wife decided to wear a white skirt to our Fourth of July barbecue. But it was not the charred remains of salmon, beef, or tofu that did the skirt in. Before our guests had arrived, she noticed a blue stain spreading across her dress like the sky [...]
Trading With the Enemy: Smart, but Never Popular
The recent and overdue debate about the Israeli blockade of Gaza raises an old, unresolved question: does shunning our enemies work or do we do them more harm by embracing them? For me, this is not a theological or moral question, although I always loved the suggestion attributed to Mark Twain to “love your enemies — [...]
"Remember: Your Mother Owns a Bank"
The Jamkid and I caught Muhammad Yunus at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco this afternoon. Yunus is the Bangladeshi banker who received the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering microcredit loans to women. He also serves as the godfather of social enterpreneurship – the fashionable and laudable notion that many social causes are best organized [...]
Holy Cow Batman! Facebook just stole our Internet!
TechCrunch just reported that Facebook has taken control of the Internet. Huh? What is the fuss about? Well, Facebook announced today a plan to reshape the Internet as profoundly as Apple is reshaping mobile computing. They today published a social software platform called the Open Graph. Founder Mark Zuckerberg called it “the most transformative thing we’ve ever done for the web”. He [...]
The People's Republic of Apple
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are the three most important technology companies in the world and they now mirror the world's three most important economies. Apple is China, booming but autocratic. Microsoft is Europe, wealthy, stagnant, and declining. Google is the USA, an immature but powerful force for freedom prone to arrogance and to fighting too many wars at [...]
How Amazon Can Compete with Apple
At the moment, Amazon's best selling Kindle is the king of the eBook readers. But the impending launch of Apple's iPad means that unless Amazon changes its direction and its mindset, the Kindle is kindling. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has a tough habit to break. It started when he built the Kindle and he deliberately [...]
Why the iPad Matters — even if you are already sick of it.
The PR was stunning, the product impressive, and the strategy tiresome. Apple stoked rumors of a dreamy tablet for either two years old or thirteen, depending on how you count. For six months, the leading tech blogs have been quivering with speculation about the "Jesus tablet". One blog, Gizmodo, offered $100,000 cash for an hour [...]
Atul Gawande: America's Doctor
Who is Atul Gawande and why is he having a bigger impact on your life than any physician in America who is not treating you?Gawwande is a cancer surgeon in Boston. A Rhodes Scholar and the recipient of a MacArthur "genius grant", he trained at Harvard, and Stanford and grabbed a Masters in Public Health [...]
The Death of the Desktop?
Google today revealed details of its operating system: Chrome OS. There is a reason that they named their operating system after their browser: their operating system IS a browser. Your computer boots in seconds and up comes a browser. Take more than a cursory look at Chrome OS and you realize that Google is offering [...]
Solar Power
There is a natural and healthy tension between politics and markets. The tension is the difference between socially oriented citizens who are often unfamiliar with business and in any case favor the strong, visible hand of government protection and their commercially-oriented brethren who prefer the invisible hand of market competition and generally view government as [...]
The Apple Squeeze
Have your noticed that Apple is getting squeezed? Consider these recent developments: 1. With Windows 7, Microsoft has substantially closed the performance gap with the Mac OS, thus quietly removing the major reason to switch to a Mac. Both professional reviews and personal experience confirm that with Windows 7, Microsoft got it right. In a [...]
"Dream bicycles that change and grow"
One of my favorite cycling blogs, Eco Velo, ran this photo some time back. I am slightly obsessed with bicycles and business, so I noticed not just four sweet rides, but a nice illustration about how competition and business innovation are changing even the bike business. THE ROMANCE OF BICYCLES Most bikes sold in most [...]
US Newspapers in a Free Fall
Today the Audit Bureau of Circulations released weekday circulation numbers for the top 25 daily newspapers in the U.S. The graph below shows changes in circulation during the past six months. These numbers are not simply awful — they represent the total collapse of the newspaper business. Only the Wall St. Journal added any subscribers [...]
Grading College Admissions Essay Questions.
The Jam Kid is applying to college. He will do fine, but his applications have exposed me once again to the college admissions racket. College applications are now standardized and online, which means that to apply to lots of colleges, a kid clicks a bit and send along a few more $50 dollar bills. He [...]
Redesigning California
Update: our local public radio station broadcast the two minute version of this post. Listen to it here.Most clichés about California are true: we are both America’s most urban state and its most agricultural. We are home to more national parks, more immigrants, and a better public university than any other state. We have Silicon [...]
How the Kindle Helps Destroy Textbooks
When Bill Clinton was elected President in the early 1990's, encyclopedias were a $1.2 billion dollar business in the US. The best encyclopedia, Britannica, owned half of the market and advertised "more than 80 Nobel laureates" among its contributors. A Britannica set cost over $1,000. They were sold door to door by over 2,000 commissioned [...]
The US Auto Hospice
Today the White House issued its assessment of the GM and Chrysler turnaround plans. To summarize: Chrysler has 30 days to live. It is being given palliative care only and physicians are under medical directive to not revive the patient. Fiat, it's slightly less dead companion, will either marry Chrysler or let it slip into [...]
Billionaire Amazon CEO works in his own warehouse.
He looks like a leprechaun and laughs like a hyena, but do not ever underestimate Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos. Back in 2006, Amazon accounted for 5.1% of all online sales. Now it accounts for 6% and it's cash flow more than doubled. The company ranks 8th in the Fortune 500 for ten year [...]
