Business

Taxicabs in San Francisco

January 01, 2007

There are 1200 taxi cabs in San Francisco, and 6000 drivers (according to my driver today). You have to wait on a waiting list to get your “medallion”, which allows you to own your own cab. If you choose, you...Continue reading...

Acumen Fund talk

November 11, 2005

Founder of Acumen was in marketing at Cisco Malaria nets imperilled by sole buyer’s (UN) discrestion So they are building new business models, with local salesmen Water in India was always free and always dirty. Monetizing clean water was...Continue reading...

Trust in Nations and Companies

February 21, 2005

From my 2002 notes of the Becoming Human conference at Stanford: In the Soviet Union, everyone believed in an unjust society, so you’d better take advantage of that or you’ll be left behind. In the U.S., society is based on...Continue reading...

Tom Peters, Master of Quotation

January 26, 2005

Tom Peters may write in an unconventional manner, but it allows him to get ideas across in a remarkably concise fashion, as he does in his This I Believe! manifesto at ChangeThis. He reads a huge amount, and I found...Continue reading...

Notes from The Corporation

July 14, 2004

Notes from The Corporation, part of my movie binge week a while back: Corporate charters were originally a “gift from the people” to serve the people, for instances like building a bridge for a city, which could not be done...Continue reading...

Notes on Robert Lucas' The Industrial Revolution

June 10, 2004

Economist and Nobel Laureate Robert E. Lucas Jr. makes some interesting observations about economic growth in the Industrial Revolution and the inequality it has wrought in his essay The Industrial Revolution: Past and Future. Much of it reminded me of...Continue reading...

Emotional Decision-Making

June 06, 2004

The Peter Principle says that workers are promoted through the ranks until they reach a position they are incompetent in. Essentially, this is because promotions are based on meeting a standard, something that is often suddenly recognized by a manager....Continue reading...

The Innovator's Dilemma: United States Edition

May 31, 2004

This month’s WIRED has an article that reminded me of a core argument in Clayton Christenson’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma—that successful businesses are vulnerable to toppling by smaller competitors when their prior success blinds them to a changing market. Philip...Continue reading...

The Importance of Being Incredible

May 04, 2004

Few things are simultaneously more impressive and disappointing to me than the phenomenon of a "power law". The idea is that a networked and global economy shrinks the barriers of both control and obedience to nothing, so a powerful person...Continue reading...

Futureproofing Myself

January 30, 2004

Love: the ultimate futureproofing. It's ambiguous, general, and utterly impossible to apply to real-world, categorized situations. But it's the only way to truly succeed and be happy, and you can rest assured that if it is applied in every question and decision, it will not fail.