My Patrix site
Categorizing technologies
In the graph below the grey circles represent the US penetration (percentage of households which own) MP3 players. Superimposed on this sparse sample graph is a line showing the sales of iPod touch. This second graph has…
Tag
Theory
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Postmodern Computing (Summit)
· Farshad · Conference, Research
Steve Jobs famously said that Apple stands at the intersection of of Technology and the Liberal Arts. He said it more than once because he thought it was an important distinction of the company. In an intuitive way, the…
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Innoveracy: Misunderstanding Innovation
Illiteracy is the inability to read and write. Though the percent of sufferers has halved in the last 35 years, currently 15% of the world has this affliction. Innumeracy is the inability to apply simple numerical…
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Postmodern computing
There are 7.1 billion people on Earth. Coincidentally there are also 7 billion mobile connections. Those connections are held by 3.45 billion unique mobile subscribers. ((GSMA)) Unsurprisingly, the largest national…
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The price is right
One of the axioms of hardware business is that prices fall over time. The consumer price index for personal computers and peripheral equipment from 1998 to 2014 is shown below: The price index suggests that prices for…
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Invulnerable
On a recent podcast I noted that Google was perceived as invulnerable. In contrast, Apple is seen as temporarily enjoying a stay of execution. ((The list of Apple Achilles’ Heels is so long and creatively composed that…
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But Apple does not pursue profits either!
In my essay on Google’s absence of profit (or income or business) motives questions were raised on the stated absence of hunger for profits from Apple and what difference there might be from Google’s philosophy. Indeed,…
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Google’s three Ps
A company is nothing more (and nothing less) than three things: people, processes and purposes. In the language of the software engineer these would be inputs, algorithms and specifications. In the language of classical…
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Moonshot
When describing the process of disruptive innovation, Clay Christensen set about to also describe the process by which a technology is developed by visionaries in a commercially unsuccessful way. He called it cramming.…
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Bundling and Pricing Innovation
This was initially posted on LinkedIn December 16, 2013. Innovation comes in many forms. Many times innovation is thought of as technological improvement or as invention. We can all cite examples of inventions which…