Matt Ridley on why invention and innovation seem to be inexhaustable: Technologies emerge from the coming together of existing technologies into wholes that are greater than the sum of their parts. Henry Ford once candidly admitted that he had invented nothing new: He had “simply assembled into a car the
For my final undergraduate business paper, I wrote an analysis of Apple as it transforms into a mobile company. I am posting it here in its entirety (except for financial exhibits) below. Especially since they released the iPhone in 2007, Apple has been spectacularly successful. In 2009, sales totaled more
Last year, I assembled my best articles from 2008, designed a book, and made it available on Blurb. It turned out really well–but because printing something with high quality paper, ink and binding is expensive, it costed $26. Ouch. A lot has changed in the past year, however. In
After two individuals (who identify themselves as students) ask Congressman Etheridge (D, NC) if he “fully supports the Obama agenda,” he pushes their camera away and grabs one of them first by the hand, and then his neck and waist. Etheridge, while refusing to let go, demands to know who
The Obama administration will try to force BP to pay for the salaries of workers who lose their jobs as a result of the administration’s deepwater exploratory drilling ban: Earlier on Wednesday, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told a Senate hearing he would ask BP to repay the
Tony Hsieh didn’t want to sell Zappos to Amazon, but had little choice because of Sequoia Capital’s investment: By early 2009, we were at a stalemate. Because of a complicated legal structure, I effectively controlled the majority of the common shares, so that the board couldn’t force
After the New York Times complained, Apple pulled the Pulse News Reader from the App Store. The New York Times claims the application violates its RSS feed terms of use because the application, by default, comes with the Times’ RSS feed installed and must be purchased. Absolutely ridiculous. The New
Apple announced the next iPhone today, and they characterized it as the biggest update since the original iPhone’s release in 2007. I don’t think that’s hyperbole. Although Apple is certainly padding the iPhone’s feature list with this release, they aren’t attempting to compete with Android
Netflix released a slideshow on their business strategy. It’s a fascinating look at what they’re thinking. Not surprisingly, of course, they are shifting to online video streaming, but their strategy for what to focus on is much more interesting. They will focus on movie and TV show streaming,
Columbia professor Ang Yuen Yuen thinks China’s cheap labor advantage is slipping away: Apparel production is a prime example of China’s declining competiveness in markets dependent on low-cost labor. According to a study by the US consulting firm Jassin O’Rourke, labor costs in China are higher
Shopify has a brilliant revenue sharing system: The way Unicorn works is that twice a month we deposit money into the Unicorn system as a revenue share with all employees. The system automatically splits it evenly amongst all employees. However, no one can simply take the money out. You can
Twitter is blocking all third=party ads: For this reason, aside from Promoted Tweets, we will not allow any third party to inject paid tweets into a timeline on any service that leverages the Twitter API. This would seem to include applications like Tweetie for Mac and Twitterrific which place