Competition in the Digital Age
Today I was fortunate enough to attend a lunch where the speaker was The Economist editor-in-chief, John Micklethwaite. His talked was wide ranging but, not surprisingly, what interested me is the question he received about disruption in his own industry. The Economist, of course, is faring well especially compared with newspapers. He attributed this to …
Continue reading "How agnostic is The Economist about print versus digital?"
First, some disclosure. I hold the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair in Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship here at the Rotman School of Management. Jeff Skoll [picture to the left from the Globe and Mail] endowed the Chair some years back and I'm the third person to hold it. So I am very grateful for that contribution …
Continue reading "Jeff Skoll defines social entrepreneurship"
It isn't every day that you wake up to read about a huge leap forward in technology. That appears to have happened today with a new product -- Leap Motion. Basically, it is Kinect on steriods and open. Watch the video. It looks quite incredible. Indeed, its inventors wrote on their site: "It sounds too …
Last week I commented in this space about the Tea Party's desire to make a symbolic cut in government by eliminating the American Community Survey and the Economic Census at the US Census. This would change economic statistics in the US, upending a system that has been in place since the end of World War …
Continue reading "A dumb compromise to save the ACS and Economic Census"
From Katherine St Asaph, an observation that AdWeek have set up what she calls a 'trollwall' for some articles (see her screenshot to the left). The idea is that you can read the full article if you share it. While this seems like a novel approach compared with a paywall, I have to point out …
For decades, there have been some consumers that would go to excessive lengths to skip ads. They would record shows on VCRs (by today's standards a complicated affair). They purchased DVRs. They resorted to piracy where ad-free versions of shows could be found. Overall, they engaged, not only in the program by program costs of …
Continue reading "What if TV networks embraced ad skipping?"
The House Republicans recently voted to remove funding from the US Census. According to news reports, this action was motivated by a mix of Tea-Party symbolism and the legacy of a long-standing fight with the Census. This post will present a short editorial. While I have sympathy for part of the motivation for this action …
Continue reading "Do not cut the American Community Survey: an editorial."
I've written before that successful social networks are geared towards encouraging sharing. In its desktop mode, Facebook achieved this by virtue of simplicity and a default group of circles. But in the mobile space it is struggling and I think I know the reason why. There are two broad activities that make a social network: …
Continue reading "Why Facebook needs to be baked into mobile OS"
It seems that you can't go anywhere these days without seeing a new pretender to a digital revolution in education. Just this week, Harvard and MIT launched an online initiative, edX. It follows Stanford University's digital education initiatives and the start-ups it has spawned, CourseRA and Udacity. Apple (with iTunes U) and now Microsoft (with its …
Continue reading "The Next Digital Revolution in Education? Grading"
Over at Forbes on my Parentonomics blog I recount the experience my 11 year old son had taking Stanford's Game Theory course. My take-a-away is that designing online content and also assessment is a real challenge and it is unlikely that normal course content will simply translate over to the new medium.
Digitopoly 