A Cambrian moment: Cheap and ubiquitous building blocks for digital products and services have caused an explosion in startups. Ludwig Siegele weighs its significance

A Cambrian moment: Cheap and ubiquitous building blocks for digital products and services have caused an explosion in startups. Ludwig Siegele weighs its significance

Jan 18th 2014 | From the print edition

ABOUT 540M YEARS ago something amazing happened on planet Earth: life forms began to multiply, leading to what is known as the “Cambrian explosion”. Until then sponges and other simple creatures had the planet largely to themselves, but within a few million years the animal kingdom became much more varied. Read more of this post

It’s Not A Bubble Until It’s Officially Denied, Singapore Edition

Leadership Challenges at Johnson & Johnson

Jan 09, 2014 Executive Education Podcasts Video North America

Alex Gorsky, a 26-year veteran of Johnson & Johnson, was appointed chairman and CEO of J&J in 2012. The New Brunswick, N.J.-based health care enterprise has close to 130,000 employees, revenues of approximately $70 billion and more than 250 operating companies around the world. Gorsky discusses his leadership style, approach to decision making and common leadership myths during a recent interview with Wharton management professors Michael Useem and Adam Grant. 

An edited transcript of the conversation follows. 

Michael Useem: Alex, welcome. I am going to start with a question about the toughest decision that you have made in the last year or so. Describe that decision: What were the conflicting concerns and then how did you work it through, given the fact that you lead a rather large company? Read more of this post

When it comes to smartphone screens, size matters for Xu Yinghong

Apple China Push Threatened by Popularity of Big Screens

When it comes to smartphone screens, size matters for Xu Yinghong.

Shopping for a new handset in Beijing, the 25-year-old electrician was deciding between devices from Apple Inc. (AAPL) and Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) He was leaning toward the South Korean company’s Galaxy Note 3, with a 5.7-inch display, instead of the iPhone 5s that measures 4 inches. Read more of this post

Soros: Fallibility, reflexivity, and the human uncertainty principle

Fallibility, reflexivity, and the human uncertainty principle

George Soros^a*

pages 309-329

Published online: 13 Jan 2014

I am honored that the editors of the Journal of Economic Methodology have created this special issue on the subject of reflexivity and have invited me, as well as a distinguished group of scholars, to contribute.

Of course I did not discover reflexivity. Earlier observers recognized it, or at least aspects of it, often under a different name. Knight (1921) explored the difference between risk and uncertainty. Keynes (1936, Chapter 12) compared financial markets to a beauty contest where the participants had to guess who would be the most popular choice. The sociologist Merton (1949) wrote about self-fulfilling prophecies, unintended consequences, and the bandwagon effect. Popper spoke of the ‘Oedipus effect’ in the Poverty of Historicism (1957, Chapter 5).

My own conceptual framework has its origins in my time as a student at the London School of Economics in the late 1950s. I took my final exams one year early, so I had a year to fill before I was qualified to receive my degree. I could choose my tutor, and I chose Popper whose book TheOpen Society and Its Enemies (1945) had made a profound impression on me.

In Popper’s other great work Logik der Forschung (1935), which was published in English as The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), he argued that the empirical truth cannot be known with absolute certainty. Even scientific laws cannot be verified beyond a shadow of a doubt: they can only be falsified by testing. One failed test is enough to falsify, but no amount of conforming instances is sufficient to verify. Scientific laws are always hypothetical in character, and their validity remains open to falsification. Read more of this post

E-Commerce Competition Intensifies in China

E-Commerce Competition Intensifies in China

By ERIC PFANNERJAN. 16, 2014

TOKYO — An arms race between the two most powerful Internet companies in China has escalated again, with one of them, Tencent, announcing an investment that pushes it further into e-commerce — territory long controlled by its rival, Alibaba. Read more of this post

China smartphones: Xiaomi the money

January 16, 2014 11:00 am

China smartphones: Xiaomi the money

iPhone’s moment in world’s biggest market comes as local competition is gearing up

Xi Guohua will not have to join any queues to get his iPhone. The China Mobilechairman was given one by Apple chief Tim Cook. Friday sees the launch of theiPhone on the Chinese network, with its mind-boggling 750m subscriber base. But the iPhone’s moment in the world’s biggest market comes just as the local competition is gearing up. If, as Apple’s (and Samsung’s) margins suggest, even high-end smartphones are becoming less profitable, what are the likes of Huawei, Lenovo and Xiaomi thinking? Read more of this post

Web Giants to Build Data Centers in Indonesia?

Web Giants to Build Data Centers in Indonesia?

By Vanesha Manuturi & Basten Gokkon on 9:38 am January 15, 2014.
Internet search engine giants Google and Yahoo may have to start building data centers in Indonesia as early as next month, if a draft regulation by the Technology and Information Ministry becomes effective. Read more of this post

Paul Berry Creates Web Megaphone Called RebelMouse; Startup Helps Users Combine Their Web Content on Home Page

Paul Berry Creates Web Megaphone Called RebelMouse

Startup Helps Users Combine Their Web Content on Home Page

GEORGIA WELLS

Jan. 15, 2014 7:04 p.m. ET

Paul Berry, whose RebelMouse online platform allows users to consolidate all their social-media content.Steve Remich for the Wall Street Journal

While working as chief technical officer at the online-news publication the Huffington Post in 2011, Paul Berry focused on making the news site’s content go viral so it could be shared via social media with millions of possible readers. Read more of this post

Is Google about to make a big push in online travel?

January 13, 2014, 1:47 PM ET

Is Google about to make a big push in online travel?

Comments by the chief executive of discount airlines Ryanair have sparked speculation that Google Inc. may be considering a big push in the online travel market. In a Sunday story in the Irish Independent, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary spoke of a new pricing system partnership with Google GOOG that “blows everyone else out of the water.” Read more of this post

How to Make Smart Televisions a Little Less Dumb

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JANUARY 15, 2014, 6:51 PM  3 Comments

How to Make Smart Televisions a Little Less Dumb

By NICK BILTON

They all looked the same. Rectangular, thin, bright and blaring. I’m talking about the televisions on display at the International CES in Las Vegas last week. Sure, some of these TVs were curved, some were (unnecessarily) large and some had brighter screens than others. But they all shared the same basictraditional attributes of televisions from the past. Read more of this post

Google Nest Purchase Seen Improving Smart-Home Gizmo Connections

Google Nest Purchase Seen Improving Smart-Home Gizmo Connections

Google Inc. (GOOG) is jumping into digital home automation with its acquisition of Nest Labs Inc., shining a spotlight on an unproven market that has so far been filled with expensive devices that can’t communicate with each other. Read more of this post

Google learns from previous failures on the ‘smart home’

January 15, 2014 2:35 pm

Google learns from previous failures on the ‘smart home’

By Richard Waters

Nest provides intelligent hardware the tech group needs

To understand why Google has just paid $3.2bn for a company that makes thermostats and smoke detectors, you need only look at some of its earlier attempts to invent the “smart home”. Read more of this post

Academic Research Platform Sciencescape Raises $2.5M, Partners With Educational Publisher Elsevier

Academic Research Platform Sciencescape Raises $2.5M, Partners With Educational Publisher Elsevier

Posted 19 hours ago by Darrell Etherington (@drizzled)

Canadian startup Sciencescape has just closed a $2.5 million round of funding, and is considering extending it into a $3 million round since it was oversubscribed, co-founder Sam Molyneux revealed on stage today at the Extreme Startups 4th cohort demo day in Toronto. Molyneux was giving an update on his company’s progress, which was a member of the last graduating class of the Canadian accelerator. Read more of this post

Huawei profits jump on smartphones, US asks Hua-who?

Updated: Wednesday January 15, 2014 MYT 4:17:10 PM

Huawei profits jump on smartphones, US asks Hua-who?

BEIJING: China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, known more for its telecom networking prowess than its razor-thin smartphones, is starting to see success in its consumer electronics business, though the key US market remains elusive. Read more of this post

A UK web pioneer cracks the US; Pete Flint helped build Lastminute.com but surpassed that with property site Trulia

January 14, 2014 3:34 pm

A UK web pioneer cracks the US

By Hannah Kuchler

MBA route: Pete Flint went to Stanford business school after Lastminute.com

Arriving in Silicon Valley 10 years ago with just two suitcases and an admissions letter for Stanford Graduate School of Business, Pete Flint was a relative nobody, despite having helped start the UK’s most famous internet business. Read more of this post

Are Potential Cable Mergers Good for Consumers?

JANUARY 14, 2014, 2:32 PM

Are Potential Cable Mergers Good for Consumers?

By DAVID GELLES

With the specter of consolidation looming over the cable operator industry, eyes are already turning to Washington, where regulators are bound to look closely at the antitrust issues surrounding any potential merger. Read more of this post

Can Dr. Dre Beat Spotify?

Can Dr. Dre Beat Spotify?

Buying music is passe; nowadays it’s all about renting. Billboard reports that sales of “album plus track equivalent albums” fell by 7.6 percent in 2013. (Among subcategories of both digital and physical media, only vinyl sales increased last year.) The new hot trends are monthly subscription services that let people rent unlimited music from large catalogs hosted in the cloud, as well as personalized radio services that make money by selling ads. Read more of this post

Ecommerce in 1984: Innovation is never pretty at first

Ecommerce in 1984: Innovation is never pretty at first

BY ERIN GRIFFITH 
ON JANUARY 14, 2014

In its earliest versions, technology is never the slick, smooth-operating magic it aspires to be. That takes iteration. Sometimes the tools just aren’t yet able to do what some visionary imagines they will one day be able to do. Other times people aren’t yet ready for a new way to do things. Either way, it’s easy to look at a new piece of technology, be it Google Glass, bitcoin, 3D printing, or Smartwigs, and dismiss it as useless, unnecessary, clunky, or not worth it. Read more of this post

German Firms Seed Web Shopping in the Developing World

German Firms Seed Web Shopping in the Developing World

ANTON TROIANOVSKI

Jan. 13, 2014 11:03 p.m. ET

LAGOS, Nigeria—The message from his boss on the phone from Germany was straightforward, recalls Hendrik Harren, a former website manager in Africa: “I want you to build the Amazon of Nigeria for me.” Read more of this post

Google Is Trying Harder Than Ever to Be Facebook; And as a result, its users feel betrayed and manipulated

Google Is Trying Harder Than Ever to Be Facebook

And as a result, its users feel betrayed and manipulated.

By David Auerbach

The Google user who wrote this piece may or may not be a Brony, but in any case, he’d like to keep it to himself.

Once upon a time, there were two sisters, Googalina and Facebookella. Googalina, the elder, was precocious beyond measure and famed for her breadth of knowledge and savvy business acumen, which brought great wealth to her family. Her counsel was widely sought, her skills in endless demand, and she gained the confidences of many. Facebookella lacked the sheer brainpower of her elder sister, but had been gifted instead with unending charm and social prowess. Facebookella became the grand dame of countless salons, bringing people together while discreetly learning their secrets. Read more of this post

How A Curious VC Found Uber Before Anyone Else, Back When It Was Only Worth $4 Million

How A Curious VC Found Uber Before Anyone Else, Back When It Was Only Worth $4 Million

ALYSON SHONTELL

JAN. 14, 2014, 1:21 PM 5,345 1

Rob Hayes led First Round Capital’s early investment in Uber. The company was only worth $4 million then; now it’s worth $3 billion more. Rob Hayes’ family was not happy with him on July 4, 2010. He spent too much of the holiday on his phone, trying to organize an investment in a new, unproven startup. Read more of this post

How Amazon is changing global retail – and other industries

How Amazon is changing global retail – and other industries

Published 13 January 2014 16:28, Updated 14 January 2014 10:19

Katherine Rushton

Jeff Bezos’s 2014 did not begin well. Last week, the Amazon founder, who turned 50 on Sunday, had his cruise of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands interrupted by kidney stones. He had to be whisked home to the United States to recover. Read more of this post

Intel’s Vietnam Success Begins With Building Paper Towers

Intel’s Vietnam Success Begins With Building Paper Towers

A quiet revolution pushed by Intel Corp. is occurring at a top Ho Chi Minh City engineering school: students clustered in small groups design paper towers while the blackboard goes unused. Read more of this post