When I was a management consultant we would read briefs written from other teams around the world. The Japanese teams were always raving about both the convenience stores and vending machines in Japan as world leaders in retailing. Given that your average bodega in North America contains questionable food of uncertain age and most vending… Continue reading The Not So Humble Convenience Store and Vending Machines
Category: Technology
The (Mobile) Elephants are Dancing
It has been a fascinating few weeks in the device-side of the mobile internet. A ton of major events have happened. It worth looking at them all to try and figure out the patterns and understand what’s going on. Item 1: Blackberry unveils preview of OS 6 Blackberry released a video showing what their new… Continue reading The (Mobile) Elephants are Dancing
Commoditizing Dog Food
It’s always refreshing to see someone take their own advice (aka eating their own dog food). Last week Facebook announced their Open Graph initiative. It’s their hugely ambitious attempt to take over the web. In a nutshell, the idea is that you Facebook will be used to log you on to all websites and all… Continue reading Commoditizing Dog Food
Why Cities Matter
When the Internet arrived in force in the ’90s, one of the promises was a new era of telecommuting. You could live in the middle of nowhere but be part of the high tech workforce in a major city. However, this hasn’t played out and, in fact, the opposite appears to be happening: cities matter… Continue reading Why Cities Matter
Facebook’s Orwell Moment
If you’re in the tech world, you are agog at the changes Facebook announced yesterday. If you’re not a techie, you probably have absolutely no idea why your geeky friends are so stunned. So let’s walk through an example of what Facebook did so that you can see what’s going on. First, if you go… Continue reading Facebook’s Orwell Moment