August 2011
121 posts
9 tags
6 tags
Steve Jobs: Beauty justifies wealth | The... →
[Mr Jobs] doesn’t give any money to charity. And when he became Apple’s CEO he stopped all of its philanthropic programs. He said, “wait until we are profitable”. Now Apple is profitable, and sitting on $40 billion in cash, and still no corporate philanthropy. I actually think Jobs is probably the most charitable guy on the planet. Rather than focus on which mosquitoes to...
7 tags
5 tags
7 tags
Google makes changes to their search algorithm an... →
infoneer-pulse:
With several hundred signals that are read and processed by their search algorithm, we’ve always known that Google puts a tremendous amount of time, money, and effort into making their results match their users’ needs. Now, we have an idea of how much tweaking is done: a lot.
Their “search scientists” test the changes they make in a sandbox environment to see how each change,...
7 tags
“Most of us are faced with a lifetime balanced budget constraint. Unless we...”
– Richard Thaler | Economist | University of Chicago
Washington Should Try a Little Prudent Self-Restraint - NYTimes.com
And there in lies the challenge to the business owner; that building a profitable firm is counter to our most common instincts, to our most likely outcome as individuals in any...
8 tags
“There is fundamental work to be done that can cut our public deficits and, above...”
– Maurice Levy editorializing in the Financial Times
I am not a masochist but the rich must pay more - FT.com
A wonderful piece of writing of which I’m in full support. A question generated from one if its brief lines: If our systems of government are broken, is the best course to remove...
11 tags
More Business Model Innovation from the Valley |... →
“We realise … that there are many talented and well-intentioned security experts around the world who don’t work for Facebook,” wrote Joe Sullivan, Facebook’s chief security officer, on the company’s blog on Monday evening. “We established this bug bounty program in an effort to recognise and reward these individuals for their good work and encourage others to join.”
Smart. Repeatedly...
4 tags
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others...”
– David Brinkley (via jonathanmoore)
Success is determined by one’s reactions to the constantly changing conditions of the world they encounter. Sounds investment advice from Mr. Brinkley. Wisdom.
J N O M I C S
9 tags
5 tags
5 tags
“Interviewer | What is your perfect idea of happiness? When and where were you...”
– Vera Wang, Designer
Honesty. Appreciate.
J N O M I C S
8 tags
Square, the iPhone Credit Card Machine, Goes... →
cameronmoll:
Alexis Madrigal:
I asked Square to make me a map of their transactions to see where they had users. The map you see shows one hour of transaction volume on a Friday afternoon. The size of the bubble represents the volume of the transactions while the different colors indicate the types of users that Square has….
Just about every major city and plenty of smaller places have...
8 tags
Robert Barro: Keynesian Economics vs. Regular... →
Theorizing aside, Keynesian policy conclusions, such as the wisdom of additional stimulus geared to money transfers, should come down to empirical evidence. And there is zero evidence that deficit-financed transfers raise GDP and employment—not to mention evidence for a multiplier of two.
Gathering evidence is challenging. In the data, transfers are higher than normal during recessions but...
8 tags
3 tags
“Leaders must invoke an alchemy of great vision.”
– Henry Kissinger
J N O M I C S
8 tags
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such is the first principle...”
– Jean-Paul Sartre | Philosopher | Nobel Laureate (Literature) 1964
Nor are markets. Nor are firms. Nor are governments. Truth.
J N O M I C S
6 tags
7 tags
The Outsider's Influence on Prep
Last week the New York Times published a fascinating article on the work of Joshua Kiss and Travis Gumbs, co-founders of Street Etiquette, a men’s style blog. The duo has originated a new idea for “prep.” They are the new purveyors of a classic image, as the article described:
Last September, Mr. Gumbs and Mr. Kissi orchestrated the site’s most involved shoot, and...
3 tags
7 tags
Digital Natives Defining New Markets
Street Etiquette co-founders Joshua Kissi and Travis Gumbs are digital natives; they were born into a world with the Internet, and used technology’s tools to refine their sense of self and hone their creative ambitions. As the New York Times recently highlighted:
The pair honed their writing skills not in the classroom but on Internet forums, particularly the ones on Hypebeast and...
7 tags
“The only information that is of value in a financial market is information that...”
– Herbert Simon | Economist | Nobel Laureate 1978
Has social technology and the advent of crowdsourcing modified this statement? Might a better way to say this be, the only information that is of value in a financial markets is information that has been interpreted differently by one party than by...
7 tags
5 tags
Watch(via High-End Retailer Brings Production Back to U.S. - Video - Bloomberg)
Aug. 26 (Bloomberg) — Lonnie Kane, Chief Executive Officer of Karen Kane speaks with Margaret Brennan, the host of Bloomberg Television’s “InBusiness”, about bringing the majority of its production back to the United States from China and the impact of the U.S. economy on hiring more workers....
8 tags
5 tags
“The single biggest misunderstanding built into the mentality of the popular...”
– James Heckman - Nobel Laureate| Economics | 2000
J N O M I C S
8 tags
5 tags
Baked In: How BenchPrep Is Turning e-Textbooks... →
BenchPrep is making that happen. The Chicago-based startup, backed by Lightbank (whose founders bankrolled Groupon), has been digitizing test prep materials for the last two years. But it’s not just making your SAT or MCAT textbooks more portable. It’s also adding social features that act as a real-time virtual study groups to get you the help you need when you need it.
More integration of...
6 tags
Steve Jobs's Greatness | via Fast Company
Jobs had just recently come back to the company, after a 12-year layoff working for two of his own startups: NeXT, which made ultra-high-end computers, and Pixar. He was taking a tour of Apple, becoming reacquainted with what the company had become in the years since he’d left. It must have been a sobering, even ugly sight: Apple was dying at the hands of Microsoft, IBM, Dell, and a...
5 tags
5 tags
Apple CEO Tim Cook's Email to the Team
Team:
I am looking forward to the amazing opportunity of serving as CEO of the most innovative company in the world. Joining Apple was the best decision I’ve ever made and it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work for Apple and Steve for over 13 years. I share Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future.
Steve has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, as well as to the entire...
7 tags
2 tags
“There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch”
– Milton Friedman | 1976
Classic. Truth.
J N O M I C S
4 tags
4 Things The U.S. Can Learn From Innovative... →
LACK OF SUPPLY CHAIN CREATES GREATER EFFICIENCIES Many of these developing countries do not have a deep supply chain of materials. Supplies are delivered on a daily basis, which improves efficiencies. In these countries, people do not use expensive buildings to store more than seven days of supplies. Additionally, storage happens in facilities in close vicinity to the main buildings. For...
6 tags
Watch(via Napkin Labs Turns IDEO’s Innovation Process Into Web Apps For All | Co. Design)
A good idea. Making the best ideas of a generation more understandable, and accessible via the Net.
J N O M I C S
5 tags
“Eugene F. Fama, a finance professor at the University of Chicago, said S.&...”
– When a Risk-Free Investment Suddenly Is Not - NYTimes.com
J N O M I C S
4 tags
U.S. economy has young Americans downsizing their... →
infoneer-pulse:
Call it Generation Vexed — young Americans who are downsizing expectations in the face of an economic future that is anything but certain. Career plans are being altered, marriages put off and dreams shelved.
“You can’t reach for the stars at this point,” Thomas said.
Fewer than half of Americans believe that the current generation will have a better life than the last,...
7 tags
6 tags
“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution.”
–
Clay Shirky
Just chatting with a friend and fellow healthcare innovator. A super talented, smart guy with a really elegant solution that every employer in the US should want. However, disrupting the price transparency issue of healthcare is pretty much impossible. That quote pretty much sums up a...
6 tags
9 tags
“He says he now prefers to just release the music for free, on account of the...”
– Girl Talk Wants To Get In Your Face
His approach has nothing to do with it being easier to Tweet “free” than otherwise. In 1999 economist Hal Varian and Carl Shapiro detailed, in their book “Information Rules,” how firms that deal in information-based-goods may often give...
6 tags
“We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that...”
– Chuck Palahniuk, Diary (via thenocturnals)
nothing lasts forever
(via fuckthereallife)
Yes.
J N O M I C S
7 tags
6 tags
Weaker Productivity and Irrational Belief in... →
Keynesians argue that the economy is suffering from a lack of spending or too little “aggregate demand.” That’s a valid point, but innovation is one means of stimulating demand. When the iPad and iPad2 arrived on the market, for example, the spending was there to support them, which suggests that more innovation could help turn around the business cycle.
The unprecedented economic growth...
6 tags
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”
– Friedrich Engels
Truth.
J N O M I C S
5 tags
“Growth is the result of strategy, not the other way around,” he said....”
– Mark Hoplamazian - CEO | Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Chicago Booth News - Web Events Hoplamazian Roundtable
J N O M I C S
5 tags
“I am always satisfied with the best.”
– Oscar Wilde
J N O M I C S
6 tags
“These radical moves will push HP in the right direction—one that IBM took some...”
– Hewlett-Packard’s overhaul: Seismic shift in Silicon Valley | The Economist
Vision.
J N O M I C S
7 tags
Hewlett-Packard’s overhaul: Seismic shift in... →
A MARINE geologist would have no problem grasping one of the main mechanisms of the information technology (IT) industry: after new technology is introduced, it sinks, often quite quickly, to the bottom of the IT ocean and becomes part of its sediment—commodities that are well understood, easily copied and hence not very profitable. This is why IT firms are always trying to move “up the stack”,...
11 tags
Upside: For Bargain Stocks, Check the Patent... →
One more factor bodes well for patent values: the recent rise of “nonoperating entities,” or, less politely, “patent trolls.” They grab patent portfolios for the purpose of suing other companies for violations and securing cash settlements. That is forcing tech firms to scoop up idle patents defensively, creating a seller’s market, says Jorge Torres, an...