The Mating of Ideas

Posted on July 15, 2010 by Bill Petti

TEDGlobal2010 is in full swing and the first talk available for viewing by those of us not lucky enough to be there live is by renowned author Matt Ridley.  Ridley’s talk is titled “When Ideas Have Sex”, and the gist of it is that knowledge is advanced by the recombination or mutation of ideas.  This is a [...]

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

Posted on July 4, 2010 by Bill Petti

Today we take these words for granted, along with the notion that people have the right to overthrow a tyrannical government and decide for themselves how they would like to be governed.  And even while the ideas were not utterly original at the time, the formal declaration of them and the subsequent revolution that was [...]

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Are Patents a Barrier to Innovation?

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Bill Petti

That’s essentially the claim of this paper (via Techdirt) by Carliss Y. Baldwin and Eric von Hippel.  Baldwin and von Hippel suggest that it is no longer clear that the ‘devil’s bargain’ (i.e. the granting of monopoly rights in order to incentives a firm to create) is on balance beneficial and fosters innovation: The work [...]

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Free-rider Businesses

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Bill Petti

Over lunch the other day, Noah mentioned this really interesting product that was announced at CES.  It’s called Airnergy and it somehow harvests the energy emitted by nearby WiFi signals and converts it into electricity that can be used to power and recharge various devices. It reminded me of a concept I’ve been toying with [...]

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Oldschool Social Networking

Posted on November 26, 2009 by Bill Petti

Today’s Wall Street Journal includes an interesting article about the Wednesday 10 group–a network of (at the time) up and coming businessmen in New York that was formed in 1957.  The group was the brainchild of former columnist William Safire, and the article coincides with the group’s first meeting since his passing.  The rationale for [...]

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Extended rant: Mark Helprin is not a crowdsourcing/social tech fan

Posted on November 12, 2009 by Bill Petti

McKinsey’s Mary Kunz interviewed Mark Helprin and discussed various issues connected to his view that the “‘all free, all the time ethos’ of the Internet threatens to erode the creation of new knowledge and new art”.  Helprin is a staunch skeptic of the creative and innovative potential of the Internet.  In fact, he stakes out [...]

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Innovation, Adaptation, and Strategy: Dolphin Edition

Posted on November 6, 2009 by Bill Petti

Tyler Cowen points to a fascinating article from 2003 about the depths of Dolphin intelligence: At the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Mississippi, Kelly the dolphin has built up quite a reputation. All the dolphins at the institute are trained to hold onto any litter that falls into their pools until they see a [...]

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While I am traveling…

Posted on November 3, 2009 by Bill Petti

So I will be traveling all day Wednesday and basically Thursday.  Substantive posting will hopefully resume soon after.  In the meantime, here are a few items to keep you busy: Over at Advertising Age, Ana Andjelic discuss why digital agencies aren’t ready to lead.  This article was originally posted over at her blog, i [love] [...]

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The Firm, Transaction Costs, and Organizing for Innovation

Posted on October 27, 2009 by Bill Petti

Ana Anjdelic responded to my latest post with some very interesting points.  She commented that some of my suggestions would significantly increase transaction costs, specifically information search costs incurred by firm.  Ana notes that increasing transaction costs in this way contradicts (or runs logically counter to) Coase’s view of the firm.  She writes: It’s true [...]

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Organizing for Innovation: A conversation with Ana Andjelic

Posted on October 25, 2009 by Bill Petti

Ana Andjelic and I have just started a discussion around how to best organize for innovation.  (BTW, if you aren’t already a reader you should really check out Ana’s blog, i [love] marketing.)  Rather than continue the conversation in the comments thread I thought it might be good to bring it over to the blog. [...]

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