Nest is a thermostat that learns from each time that you adjust the temperature. Just like Pandora and Netflix learn from your choices of music and movies, this thermostat learn from each time you re-set the temperature (both temperature, time of day, and time of year). That’s a big deal, since there is so much wasting of electricity due to inefficiency. This is simple, requires little change in behavior, will pay for itself, and has a sleek design (it was designed by people who worked on the Ipod).
My career to a certain degree benefits from what I see as a positive bias toward entrepreneurship and small business. I admit that I have held this view, that entrepreneurship is always good. However, as I’ve thought about it more and done more research, I have come to believe that, at least in America, we have built up entrepreneurship as some panacea. Politicians of every shade of political leaning keep saying that what we need is entrepreneurship. I think that this is a sign that perhaps we might be building the starting of a business up to be a secular religion.
This article from the Economist provides one point of information that indicates that perhaps not all statistics of entrepreneurship and small business are signs of economic prowess. I think that their point, that having a lot of startups or a lot of small businesses is not necessarily a good thing, makes sense.
There are many reasons that companies are small or big that likely drive statistics. So the answer to “Is entrepreneurship good?” is most likely, “It depends.” I think that the problem is that people with a set ideology try to find statistics that support their view, even if they don’t understand the statistics. Moreover, they are never willing to admit that there are conditions where they could be wrong. Finally, there is not sufficient statistical understanding that the public can think through false claims. I hope that academics can play an increased role in helping to provide better information and better interpretation of the data that we have.
This interview with Richard Branson is related to some of the research on resource acquisition that Nachiket and I are working on. A few points that I see from this interview is that there are sometimes conflicting interests. What is is in the interest of the business and the entrepreneur are not always aligned. So the business might be able to grow more quickly, but Branson says that retaining control is important. This seems acceptable, since business is not all profit-motivated. But I think it’s an interesting to note that the conclusion is that perhaps the entrepreneur is giving up some financial return by retaining control. This relates to our study of which resource acquisition sequences tend to lead to improved performance for the firm.
This interview also illustrates another project that I am starting on how resource providers’ attitudes toward entrepreneurs and small organizations influence startup activities. Branson says that he had employees that wanted to work in small organizations. Much of his assumptions are based on a Western, individualistic notion of work. These assumptions seem to be limited in other cultural contexts, and may explain differing methods of innovation across contexts.
My officemate and I were talking about how reality shows provide us access to different industries and careers, and how that may affect the industries themselves. Here’s an article saying how the storage auction reality shows are influencing the storage industry. It’s an interesting phenomenon to me because it requires individual business owners to be directly involved, but the benefits (or costs) are experienced differentially by the rest of the industry.
This is an interesting article about brick-and-mortar businesses have been transitioned to the internet. However, what I think is more interesting is the role to try to legitimize the pawn shop industry. It seems to be inherently predatory, at least in my experience (I’ve looked to buy at pawn shops and know people that sell to them). The use of a reality show is an interesting way to build the legitimacy for the entire industry. I wonder if the National Pawnbrokers Association helped to push the reality shows. My family and I love what I’ve seen of Pawn Star. It seems like a good industry association strategy.
In our first class (Spring 2009), one of the groups proposed to develop a smart phone app used to compare products in nearby stores. I think that the members of this team moved on to other things. It’s now the big thing for Black Friday!
We’ve had several groups come up with ideas for mobile applications. This interview with I-fund’s Matt Murphy talks about an investment fund that is specifically focused on mobile apps. The new I-Pad architecture creates a lot of new opportunities in this space.
It’s nice to see Joe Mullenbach and Alex Johansson move forward with the start-up that they began in MGMT 4080. And they recently got some publicity. Congratulations.
I really enjoyed this video about how some technologies only have value if the necessary complementary technologies are also present. What orphaned technologies might be out there just waiting for the complementary technologies to make them useful?
Designed to be an “open-source” learning resource for entrepreneurship. An important part of this course which brings together technology and business school students to turn ideas into viable businesses.
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