Innovation, Creative Class and Immigration

A real nice article by Christopher Newfield in the Huff Post, discussing immigration & innovation and also the difference between focusing on engineers & start-ups and creative class people. Read here

Frugal Innovation

Disruptive innovations create jobs, whereas efficiency innovations destroy them

An article by Rip Empson describing a talk held by Clayton Christensen at BoxWorks 2012 about disruptive and incremental innovation. "Understanding the customer is the wrong thing to do — it’s confusing,” he said, before citing Peter Drucker’s assertion that customers rarely buy what companies think they are selling.

Read the whole article here: 

Why Lada Gaga is Right on Music Innovation

"No, music wasn’t born this way, but Lady Gaga is helping to re-define it just the same. So what’s happening and why does it matter to you? – Here’s the score: Lady Gaga recently announced that her new album wouldn’t be an album at all, but rather an app, and by the way she isn’t the first famous musician to do this, she’s just the most famous so far. This changes things."

Clinton Bonner explains the role Lady Gage play in innovating the music industry. Introducing a music experience in many different facets (online, gaming, social, etc). 

Read further here...

In Praise of Copycats

"'Critics called it "Bogle's folly.' In 1976, John Bogle introduced the first index fund through his new company, the Vanguard Group. The idea was based on research for his senior thesis in economics at Princeton, in which he showed that, on average, professional money managers failed to beat the rate of return of the overall market. (The thesis, written in 1950, earned him an A+.). Wall Street veterans initially scoffed at the fund, which tracked the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

Who would be content with hitting the market average? But the critics were quickly proven wrong. Vanguard grew explosively, and it is now the largest mutual fund company in the nation. Mr. Bogle's ideas have been widely copied by rival firms. Until recently, competitors were free to copy financial innovations—and as a result, index funds are now a huge business for Wall Street..."

Read the rest of the article here