In organizations, does decentralization generate experimentation?

Here’s interesting stuff from three economics / business guys — one from Stanford, one from Harvard and one from London School of Economics (the entire thing sounds like the beginning of a joke, right?) — about decentralized authority structures and… Continue Reading

Cornell is trying to buck the Ivy League mold to a Silicon Valley place

Admittedly these are all stereotypes, but when you think about the Ivy League, you often think about guys (not talking about women here, per se) who want finance-type jobs in New York City or otherwise along the I-95 corridor. Please… Continue Reading

Where are the most U.S. citizens in debt? San Jose and McAllen, Texas apparently.

77 million American adults — which is one-third of the populace — have debt in collections right now. The average — remember, I just typed “average” — American with a credit file has $50,000 in debt. If you’re looking for… Continue Reading

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Could acqui-hiring work outside the tech space?

The basic concept of “acqui-hiring” is pretty simple — as more tech talent (primarily that’s the industry where this happens) opts for start-ups over bigger companies, the bigger companies find it harder to acquire talent the conventional way (i.e. recruiting… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: could modern-day San Francisco someday go the way of Detroit?

This isn’t going to be the most informed post of all-time; it’s mostly just a set of potentials and theories. Still, I think it’s interesting to consider. Start here: you can make an argument that, in the pre-war period and… Continue Reading

The two “next big things” for tech are the mobile space and data. As such, is Facebook about to overtake Google?

You can certainly make a case that the Internet/tech world is shifting a bit. Mobile is “the next big thing,” and that space hurts Google — phrased simply, there’s less space for ads; phrased in a more complicated way, Google does know what… Continue Reading

American investors love companies that have growth potential but may be losing money: Amazon, Pandora, etc. Is Spotify next?

Amazon doesn’t really make profits, and investors love it. Pandora is having strong growth in monthly active users, but was a company in 2005 and just had a profitable year in 2013 — and that’s only if you remove certain one-off expenses. Meanwhile, look at… Continue Reading

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Big data is the future, but no one seems to understand it and we’re not teaching it enough. Can this end well?

Let’s follow the bouncing ball here: 1. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) released the top 10 office trends of 2014 recently; admittedly it reads a little bit like a press release from someone in their 50s who’s nervous… Continue Reading