We are right in the middle of the Shiny-Tech Information Age. And if there is one person we can thank, the credit goes to the legendary Alan Turing – the father of computing. I don’t use the word legendary lightly. Turing’s first claim to fame was during the height of World War II when he saved millions of lives by breaking …
“You recognize true innovation because doubt, fear and excitement are part of its entourage. It should make you a tad-bit uncomfortable, skeptical, and at the same time raise your hopes.” So reads a line from my post on innovation Red Queen of Technology, written just a few days ago. And Planetary Resources, a startup backed by some big shots …
Heart felt advice from 44 or so of the best entrepreneurs the world has seen, including Elon Musk (of Tesla), Reid Hoffman (of LinkedIn), and Sara Blakely (of Spanx). That in itself is worth more than what money can buy. But what’s more impressive is how David Kidder (of Clickable) crisply pinpoints the 5 recurring themes from his conversations with …
Computer scientists, both classical and the quantum kind like me, traditionally divide the world into two problems that can be solved easily (= scales polynomially in time with more inputs) and not so easily (= scales exponentially). The former class of problems are formally called P and the latter NP. The reason this is a big deal and why you …
Two words are thrown around a lot these days, mostly together: Big Data. Given the abundance of information, affordability of data storage, ease of collection, lax privacy concerns and even better, eagerness to share, data is ubiquitous. How we shop, what we eat, how our hearts beat, and what the world did for millions of years. If there is any record …
‘Innovation’ is a sickening buzzword & cliche these days, with an (almost) exponential growth (and degradation) in the word’s usage over the past two decades. In fact, the word has lost its meaning so much that I ended up removing any traces of it from my Linkedin profile, after hearing it on America’s Next Top Model. A wannabe model called …
What spurs breakthroughs? Technological and scientific breakthroughs occur when one or more of the following 5 things occur: 1. New measurement techniques, tools & regimes: When new regimes of measurement and exploration are possible, people begin to see, understand, control, and design things differently. Invention of the scanning tunneling microscope (STM) and its successor the atomic force microscope spurred the birth of nanotechnology. …
Guess how Mademoiselle Chanel did her market research for the world’s most popular perfume? Dana Thomas’s Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster is certainly a luscious read on the history of luxury. What caught me by surprise was the number of business issues Dana dives into and the phenomenal job she does discussing them. Coco Chanel: an icon, a visionary, and …
My obsession (investment?) with The Settlers of Catan is paying out triple fold. There is an easier way to learn the basics of building a successful start up without actually starting one – although starting is the best way. Master the strategy game of Catan and look for underlying mechanics of how winning works. Just a few games in and you will …
B2B: Business-to-business. B2C: Business-to-consumer. Startups are not easy ventures. Average exit times range widely from 7 years (for VCs) to 16 (for founders). Coffee consumption, phone bills, stress level, rejections – everything but your bank balance – soars. It is filled with scores of late nights, earlier mornings, personal sacrifices, pain and bouts of self-doubt. And as this uncrunched …