Disruptive innovation is a theory about why businesses fail. It’s not more than that. It doesn’t explain change. It’s not a law of nature. It’s an artifact of history, an idea, forged in time; it’s the manufacture of a moment of upsetting and edgy uncertainty. Transfixed by change, it’s blind to continuity. It makes a very poor prophet.
Category: Tech
Who Solved the Capitalist’s Dilemma ?
In particular, they observe that capital is allocated toward the type of innovations which increase efficiency or performance and not toward those which create markets (and hence long term growth and jobs.) This itself is caused by a prioritization and rewarding of performance ratios rather than cash flows and that itself is due to a perversion of the purpose of the firm.
If a Bubble Bursts in Palo Alto, Does It Make a Sound?
The truth is that most Americans have little interaction with the big-money, small-jobs technology boom, so they might be sheltered from the worst of the technology bust, at least as it looks today, if not years from now. But that might be cold comfort: It is a sad state of affairs if one of the most vibrant, explosive and creative parts of the economy — and one of the few that is minting millionaires — seems more like a walled garden than a public park.
Still No. 1, and Doing What He Wants
It is good to be the king. It is even better to be Larry Ellison.
Most of us spend much of our lives thinking that we should do the right thing, or worrying that we didn’t do the right thing, or trying at long last to finally do the right thing. Mr. Ellison, the fifth-richest person in the world and the chief executive with the highest total compensation in 2013, appears burdened by no such concerns.
Why WhatsApp Doesn’t Sell Ads
Back on June 18, 2012, WhatsApp’ founders/PR/younameit wrote this brillant statement about “Why [WhatsApp] [doesn’t] sell ads.”
Today, WhatsApp sold itself to one of the world’s largest advertiser.
Advertising isn’t just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it’s all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out… And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.
Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.
Abnormal Capitalist 