High stakes, low yields and endless pyrrhic victories… Well, the verdict is in, at least this week’s verdict is in, as Apple got a jury in their own back yard to endorse their claim that rounded rectangles actually does amount to Intellectual Property. Interesting, since many displays have employed rounded rectangles for years. The next […]

Aesthetics, Intellectual Property and pyrrhic legal victories Awhile back there were a couple of posts here about the intersection of design and technological innovation (The more I buy gadgets, the better I like furniture and The Ghost in the Machine …October and November 2011) which raised the question as to whether or not design and […]

Walled Gardens, Social Media and Toxic Value Proxies The trouble with events is that they sometimes have calamitous confluences. Take Facebook. Unless you’ve been lost at sea for the past several weeks you’re probably aware of the bourgeoning Greek tragedy that is currently known as the Facebook IPO, the largest IPO in the history of […]

The Economy of Innovation and Mutually Assured Destruction Over the past few months, a number of the posts here have dealt with the notion of the economy of innovation (See Requiem for a Business Model, Parts I & II… January and February) Both of these posts explored the idea that rivals could not afford to […]

Mad men, production functions and social media marketing Years ago, a colleague of mine, Barry Clapp, explained to me his theory of advertising. I’m sure I don’t remember the subtleties but it went something like this…. Demand for any consumer good or service over any prospective population of buyers is essentially random, consequently the value […]

This one’s just too good to pass up. Normally, I don’t post about current events. Mostly because it is difficult to learn any thing from the blur of the present. But since the last couple of posts dealt directly with Microsoft and Open Source Software (Requiem for a Business Model) and indirectly with Nokia (Value […]

Open Source: You say goodbye and I say hello Many years ago C. Gordon Bell, perhaps the foremost student of the computing industry, drafted a paper with a working title of something like “Microprocessors: Any Winning Avenues Left?”. In it he analyzed the trajectories of broad categories of then current technologies including cpu, memory, operating […]

Ahhh, Facebook, the site that launched 500 million sites; the world’s clamoring social bazaar ; that intoxicating mix of narcissism and vanity that usually peaks in high school. There’s a well-worn axiom that goes something like this: you’re nobody ‘til somebody sues you. Well, Facebook has truly arrived. Recently, a suit was filed contending that […]