Group items tagged

How did you discover the wisdom of crowds?  The idea really came out of my writing on how markets work. Markets are made up of diverse people with different levels of information and intelligence, and yet when you put all those people together and they start buying and selling, they come up with generally intelligent decisions. Sometimes, though, they come up with remarkably stupid decisions-as they did during the stock-market bubble in the late 1990s. I was interested in what explained the successes and the failures of markets, and as I got further into it I realized that it wasn't just markets that were smart. In fact, crowds of all sorts were often remarkably wise.

Facebook marketing company Pagemodo recently pulled research from sources around the web to produce the infographic below, looking at just how much faith marketers have in social media. The aggregated data shows a sense of conservative optimism. Sixty-four percent of business owners say social media marketing is a promising tactic and they believe it provides returns - but they aren't willing to go all in with it just yet and favor a more cautious approach. Another 20% are more bullish on its potential, according to the same study, while just 6% are hardcore skeptics.

"Since deregulation in the 1980s and the emergence of the commercial Internet in the 1990s, the telecommunications industry has faced disruptions and premature reports of its untimely demise. But the challenges have never been greater than now. The stock market has punished most large carriers while richly rewarding companies that compete with telcos. Since Google's IPO in 2004, its market capitalization has risen to about $150 billion, while the value of most operators in developed markets has fallen. The U.S. telecom industry has lost more than 100,000 jobs in the past five years and more than 400,000 in the last decade. The decline in wireless average revenue per user (ARPU), which began in the United States in 2006, has since spread to most major operators. Carriers are not standing still. They are rapidly reducing costs and trying to streamline operations1. These moves are necessary but not sufficient. The world is spinning too rapidly for restructuring as usual-no matter how deep-to keep working. Game-changing forces, such as cloud computing and "voice for free" services, are warping the industry. (See Exhibit 1.) Cloud computing, for example, exposes operators to competition from major IT players, while free voice services-led by Google, Skype, and others-threaten operators' main source of revenue."

I nternational leaders face an era of unprecedented change. The recession and  financial crisis that ended in 2009 caused a seismic shift that has reshaped  the global business landscape. The world economy is now characterized  by sluggish growth in the West, a shift in power to the East, and value-driven  customers and rising risks everywhere. At the same time, the downturn has  hastened the adoption of key technologies-mobility, cloud computing, business  intelligence and social media-that are transforming businesses and sparking a  new wave of wealth creation, particularly in the emerging world. Economic growth and technology are inextricably linked. Current economic  conditions are fostering investment in technology as emerging markets ramp up  their demand for technology to fuel growth, and advanced markets seek new  ways to cut costs and drive innovation. This becomes a virtuous circle as digital  technologies drive consumer income and demand, education and training, and  efficient use of capital and resources-leading to increased economic growth,  particularly in emerging markets. 

The New Market Places - Peer to Peer Collaborative Consumption March 10, 2011 at 8:55am Collaborative consumption market places are everywhere: media, car rental, lodging, staffing, textbooks, apparel, custom graphic design and even finance. Netflix shares DVDs among a large subscriber base. ZipCar and GetAround make car sharing easy. Travelers rent a local's apartment for a few days through HomeAway and 9Flats. College students rent textbooks from Chegg. Moms exchange children's clothing on ThredUp. Graphic designers create beautiful paper products and fulfill orders through Minted. Short term borrowers find loans from a community of individual lenders on Zopa and LendingClub.

Venture capital (VC) has delivered poor returns for more than a decade. VC returns  haven't significantly outperformed the public market since the late 1990s, and, since  1997, less cash has been returned to investors than has been invested in VC.  Speculation among industry insiders is that the VC model is broken, despite occasional  high-profile successes like Groupon, Zynga, LinkedIn, and Facebook in recent years.  The Kauffman Foundation investment team analyzed our twenty-year history of venture  investing experience in nearly 100 VC funds with some of the most notable and  exclusive partnership "brands" and concluded that the Limited Partner (LP) investment  model is broken 1 . Limited Partners-foundations, endowments, and state pension  fund-invest too much capital in underperforming venture capital funds on frequently  mis-aligned terms. Our research suggests that investors like us succumb time and  again to narrative fallacies, a well-studied behavioral finance bias. We found in our own  portfolio that: * Only twenty of 100 venture funds generated returns that beat a public-market  equivalent by more than 3 percent annually, and half of those began investing  prior to 1995. * The majority of funds-sixty-two out of 100-failed to exceed returns  available from the public markets, after fees and carry were paid. * There is not consistent evidence of a J-curve in venture investing since 1997;  the typical Kauffman Foundation venture fund reported peak internal rates of  return (IRRs) and investment multiples early in a fund's life (while still in the  typical sixty-month investment period), followed by serial fundraising in month  twenty-seven. * Only four of thirty venture capital funds with committed capital of more than  $400 million delivered returns better than those available from a publicly  traded small cap common stock index. * Of eighty-eight venture funds in our sample, sixty-six failed to deliver expect

We already know that supercomputers, sophisticated algorithms and mathematical models are at the very heart of the modern financial markets. Now, with l'affaire Knight Capital we've just seen how robot traders and rogue algorithms could potentially take down Wall Street. In a span of less than an hour, a rogue algorithm programmed to exploit market efficiencies by buying and selling stocks repeatedly for profit actually inverted the logic of Wall Street: instead of buying low, selling low, the algorithm began to buy high, sell low. All told, the rogue algorithm resulted in a $440 million loss for Knight Capital, causing many to question the state of our modern financial markets

Connected entertainment will drive revenues in the so-called "smart home" market to nearly $60 billion by 2017 - up from just $25 billion in 2012. That's the finding of Juniper Research in a new report examining the smart home market and the financial opportunities derived from connected devices and service models.

"Now that President Obama has been re-elected, it's time to get down to business. We know that middle-class jobs are important for the economy to continue growing over the next four years. The broadband market becomes a launch-pad in opportunities to create needed jobs, if the right policies are set into motion. Let's look at the technology landscape and determine how to achieve a robust and competitive marketplace which advances stated goal of bringing back higher tax revenues, which job creation, can accomplish. Revitalising the market with true competition should be the base of any tech policy initiative. If it does not meet that basic requirement, there's no need to bother."

"June 2012: The essential compendium of need-to-know statistics. Beware of media hype and mobile myth - put your mobile strategy on a sound footing with the latest research and stats from credible independent experts. Global mobile subscribers, top mobile countries, handset sales, smartphone market share, tablets, mobile phone security, top mobile network operators."

The Internet significantly affects OECD economies at different levels and in numerous different / impact areas. In particular the Internet impacts firms in various sectors, individuals and governments. It / also has some observable general macro-economic effects. /  At the firm level, the restructuring of business models in association with use of the Internet has / led to improved efficiencies./ 1/  The impact of the Internet can also be seen in the rapid growth of new firms / founding their businesses on the Internet. The Internet's enhanced communication capabilities are affecting / nearly all sectors of the economy in ways that may be as subtle as making previously hard-to-find data / available online or as profound as transforming an entire market such as is occurring with music, video, / software, books and news.  /  The Internet is reshaping the way individuals live. It brings benefits of higher consumer welfare / (through a larger variety of digital goods and services, lower prices, improved information gathering, more / distribution channels and so forth). In addition, individuals benefit from a more efficient labour market/ 2/ and, on a broader level, from positive impacts on the environment/ 3/  and in education. /  For governments, Internet development enables better communication with citizens, industry and / other organisations. The Internet has also helped governments run more efficiently via improved / information sharing, increased transparency and the automation of various resource-intensive services.  /  The impacts of the Internet on the individual, firm and government level can be also observed at / the aggregated, macroeconomic scale. Existing empirical studies, including ongoing OECD work, suggest / a positive link between increasing Internet adoption and use and economic growth. Even though the / aggregated effects are still preliminary, the relationship between Internet development and economic / growth, as well as microeconomic ev

Now in its eighth year, Where Conference: The Art and Business of Location, is where the grassroots and leading-edge developers building location-aware technology intersect with the businesses and entrepreneurs seeking out location apps, platforms, and hardware to gain a competitive edge. In the O'Reilly conference tradition, Where Conference presents leading trends rather than chasing them. Where is business: where people live, where they go, and where, when, and how they spend their money are now key factors in business success. From product development to distribution, marketing, and sales, location technologies help companies identify, understand, and serve their markets far more effectively than ever before. There's no better place to meet the people behind the mashups, the people behind the platforms, and the people looking ahead to where location awareness will take us. Join us at Where to debate and discuss what's viable now, and what's lurking just below the radar.

Every web publisher - and especially content marketer - yearns for an engaged and loyal audience. But with the sheer volume of noise, clutter and - well, content - online it can be hard to figure out how to reach people and keep them coming back for more. The content marketing agency BlueGlass knows a lot about how to do this well. They've run successful campaigns for clients including eBay, Conde Nast and Greatist. Now BlueGlass is ready to share some of its secrets with Mashable readers. The company produced this exclusive infographic to run down some of the ways you too can build an engaged audience online. Here are a few quick tips: Make sure you have a gripping headline, keep your copy to the point, make sure to provide value and promote, promote, promote.

"Students may now spend more time on Facebook than down the pub, but research seen by Marketing Week suggests that brands wanting to connect with 16- to 24-year-olds should reassess their f-commerce strategies."

The aim of this study is to assess the effects of information and communications technologies (ICTs) on the firms' capabilities to innovate in a selection of OECD countries. This findings support the hypothesis that ICTs act an enabler of innovation, particularly for product and marketing innovation, in both manufacturing and services. However, not is been find any evidence that ICT use increases the capability of a firm to cooperate, to develop innovation in-house or to introduce products new-to-the-market. These results suggest that ICTs enable firms to adopt innovation but they not increase their "inventive" capabilities. (www.eldis.org)

"he international 'digital divide' is closing as a steady fall in worldwide costs of telephone and broadband Internet services has enabled a number of developing countries to expand their access to information and communication technology (ICT), the United Nations telecoms agency says in a report released today. Measuring the Information Society 2012, produced by the UN International Telecommunication Union (ITU), says that developing countries now account for the "lion's share" of market growth in the mobile sector, according to an ITU press release detailing the report. The report also shows that the ICT sector has not only become a major contributor to economic growth, but is especially so in developing countries, where global exports of ICT goods accounted for 20 per cent of their merchandise trade in 2010, compared to 12 per cent world wide. "While prices in developed economies have stabilized, those in developing countries continue to fall at double-digit rates," ITU stated in a news release on the report. But, ITU said, the digital divide - generally defined as the difference in levels of ICT access between developed and developing countries - remains significant."

"Social media addiction: a disease likely affecting millions, but one that's hard to track because it comes in many forms. The afflicted may reveal themselves as serial likers. They may have push notifications set for the most minor of social media updates. They may self-identify as "mavens," "gurus" or "ninjas." But regardless of their appearance, they do walk among us. Of that we can be sure. The following infographic, which comes by way of the marketing software company Marketo, details 10 of the most common types of social media fiends. There's "The Constant Checker," who can't go more than a few minutes without looking at his Twitter mentions or Instagram likes. There's the Klout-obsessed "Self-Proclaimed Influencer." There's also the "Multi-Mayor," who has to check in to a location every time she moves ten feet. Any of these stereotypes hit a little too close to home? We certainly have to admit some do here. Check out the full infographic below for more. Then let us know in the comments - which of these personalities do you identify with? Are there any you would add?"

While there are more than 7,000 business incubators around the world, very few focus specifically on education technology. In fact, only in the past few years has there been major growth in the number of these highly-focused incubators. Part of this increased attention is an outgrowth of a mission to genuinely help education. Yet these kinds of incubators are also thriving simply because edtech is a solid investment, as the education technology market is poised to grow by leaps and bounds in the coming years. A handful of successful startups have already come out of these edtech incubators, but as the number and variety of these incubators grows worldwide, the ranks of edtech superstars likely will, too, which could have major ramifications for the future of education. Here, we highlight just a few of the edtech incubators that are making waves in the world today, a list that's sure to grow rapidly over the next decade.

"Georges Nahon delivered a very inspiring keynote today before our panel of bloggers in which he shared his vision with regard to what is happening in IT in general, and in the Valley in particular. I will begin my account of Georges's visionary presentation by detailing his conclusions. As I always do, I have taken detailed notes of the pitch and they are made available at the end of this piece. If there is one thing that should be remembered from that pitch is that the Web is everywhere and in everything that will be happening in the future. Something which established players don't like according to the Head of Orange Silicon Valley. However, Nahon insisted on the fact that it won't be the same Internet we used to know."