Given the early mission of the internet to democratize information, it’s somewhat surprising that we don’t see more nonprofits operating in the tech space. Wikipedia is the strongest example of what that model might look like. In New York, The Driver Cooperative (TDC), is trying to launch a ridesharing app that would get closer to…
Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women worldwide. Early detection and treatment can lower mortality rates. But clinicians still fail to identify breast cancer about 20 percent of the time (false-negative results). Clinicians also identify cancer, when there is no breast cancer present (false-positive results). Studies suggest 7-12 percent of women will receive…
A key tenet of innovation and technology is the premise that we deploy technology at a higher level (more widely and with greater frequency) as it moves from a scarcity to a surplus. I call this Law of Technological Abundance. The classic example I like to use to describe this phenomenon is the case of…
A month or two ago I submitted an offer to buy a house. I received the paperwork about an hour before the submission deadline. Five years ago I would have needed to meet someone in person to sign the required paperwork. Or possibly I might have been able to receive the paperwork electronically but I…
An all-digital world accelerates commerce. As “things” become digital or as physical non-digital things gain a virtual and digital identity the speed at which they can move approaches the speed at which digital things can move. This all results in the speed of commerce for both digital and non-digital things accelerating. In a digital world…
With a rapid rate of technological change, comes another technological development. In the digital world that we now live in, it has become common we often create technology to stop other technology from working which in turn spawns additional innovation designed at stopping that technology from working. Wide deployment of home telephony spawned the creation…
I’m at the beach this week and took along my Chromecast. A few thoughts from the week: It works awesome. A very seamless experience. I used the new iOS app to set it up and it worked perfectly from the start. A great user experience which will enable it to go a very long way.…
There has been much written about how digital is broadly changing news dissemination, but beyond simple replacement of the paper alternative and an acceleration of “news” to satisfy an always-on consumer, I think there is a deeper change afoot. Yes, “traditional news” is undergoing significant change through the direct and indirect influences of digitization –…
At rare times in our collective history a tech product is introduced – one that is so new it doesn’t have a market. It’s capabilities and functionality are largely undefined – left to others to uncover. These devices and services offer tremendous promise. They offer promise about what can come to fruition through the right application of…
The world is truly becoming flat when it comes to consumer tech and that has had (and is having) profound ramifications on the competitive nature of the global marketplace for consumer tech. The global tastes and preferences of consumers are becoming homogeneous and while some subtleties still exist between geographic markets, these differences are quickly becoming marginalized. Take for example…
