TAGmclaren - Slashdot User

Submission + - Your Smartphone Is Working for the Surveillance State (hbr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 07, 2013 @03:56PM

An anonymous reader writes: The Harvard Business Review is is running an article on the recent revelations around PRISM, drawing the parallel between the East German surveillance state and what the US Government has managed to achieve. From the article: "In terms of the capability to listen to, watch and keep tabs on what its citizens are doing, the East German government could not possibly have dreamed of achieving what the United States government has managed to put in place today. The execution of these systems is, as you'd expect, very different. The Germans relied upon people, which, even if not entirely effective, must have been absolutely terrifying: if for no other reason than you weren't sure who you could and could not trust. There was always that chance someone was reporting back on you. But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants."

Submission + - Your iPhone Works for the Secret Police (hbr.org)

Submitted by hype7 on Friday June 07, 2013 @12:15PM

hype7 writes: The Harvard Business Review (of all places) is running an article putting the revelations of PRISM and Verizon in the context of the surveillance state that US Government has managed to build — and compares the effort with that of the Stasi under East Germany. From the article: "But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants."

Submission + - The 787's Problems Run Deeper Than Outsourcing (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren on Wednesday January 30, 2013 @09:32AM

TAGmclaren writes: The Harvard Business Review is running a fascinating article exploring the issues facing Boeing's Dreamliner. Rather than simply blaming outsourcing, as much of the commentary has been focused on, the article delves into the benefits of integration and how being integrated when developing a new product gives engineers more degrees of freedom. From the article: "Historically, Boeing understood that, and had worked with its subcontractors on that basis. If it was going to rely on them, it would provide them with detailed blueprints of the parts that were required — after Boeing had already created them. That, in turn, meant that Boeing had to design all the relevant pieces of the puzzle itself, first. But with the 787, it appears that Boeing tried a very different approach: rather than having the puzzle solved and asking the suppliers to provide a defined puzzle piece, they asked suppliers to create their own blueprints for parts. The puzzle hadn't been properly solved when Boeing asked suppliers for the pieces. It should come as little surprise then, that as the components came back from far-flung suppliers, for the first plane ever made of composite materials... those parts didn't all fit together. Time and cost blew out accordingly.

It's easy to blame the outsourcing. But, in this instance, it wasn't so much the outsourcing, as it was the decision to modularize a complicated problem too soon."

Submission + - Aaron Swartz, and the corruption of America's justice system (hbr.org) 4

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday January 14, 2013 @08:24PM

hype7 writes: "Harvard Business Review is running an article on the criminal justice system, and how what happened to Aaron Swartz isn't just an example of a "rogue prosecutor", but rather, a function of something that Aaron was fighting against — the influence of money in politics. From TFA: I simply don't know how else to explain the huge disparity in how justice was sought in these very different cases — other than regulatory capture. It seems you can get away with laundering money for the drug cartels, so long as you've been generous with the those responsible for appointing district attorneys; or better yet, if your industry has paid to undo all the regulation that prevents you from getting too big to fail. Similarly, when your lobby has been helping Congress draft the laws that govern food, drugs, and cosmetics, you can make sure that the federal sentencing guidelines are only six months should you breach the responsible corporate officer doctrine. This in turn means you can inject unsafe cement into people's spines with relative impunity. But woe betide you if, in the name of openness and sharing human knowledge, you decide to download academic journals. Because that sounds a lot like piracy — and we all know how much has been spent to stamp that scourge out."

Submission + - How corruption is strangling US Innovation (hbr.org) 1

Submitted by

hype7

on Friday December 07, 2012 @08:39PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting piece on how money in politics is having a deleterious effect on US innovation. From the article:
if you were in any doubt how deep inside the political system the system of contributions have allowed incumbents to insert their hands, take a look at what happened when the Republican Study Committee released a paper pointing out some of the problems with current copyright regime. The debate was stifled within 24 hours. And just for good measure, Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired. Sure, debate around policy is important, but it's clearly not as important as raising campaign funds.
"

Submission + - Who cares if Samsung copied Apple (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday August 20, 2012 @09:24AM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running an article that's questioning the very premise of the Apple v Samsung case. From the article: "It isn't the first time Apple has been involved in a high-stakes "copying" court case. If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case. But it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.""

Submission + - Harvard Business Review comes out against SOPA (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Wednesday January 18, 2012 @01:08PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review has come out with an article extremely critical of SOPA. As opposed to a battle of "content" vs "technology", they are characterizing it as a battle of "giants" vs "innovators". From the article: "If you take a look at many of the largest backers of SOPA and PIPA — the Business of Software Alliance, Comcast, Electronic Arts, Ford, L'Oreal, Scholastic, Sony, Disney — you'll see that they represent a wide range of businesses. Some are technology companies, some are content companies, some are historic innovators, and some are not. But one characteristic is the same across all of SOPA's supporters — they all have an interest in preserving the status quo. If there is meaningful innovation by startups in content creation and delivery, the supporters of SOPA and PIPA are poised to lose.""

Submission + - Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma (hbr.org)

Submitted by hype7 on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @12:54PM

hype7 writes: With yesterday's release of the Steve Jobs biography, a raft of interesting information has come to light — including Jobs' favorite books. There's one book there listed as "profoundly moving" Jobs — the Innovator's Dilemma by innovation Professor Clayton Christensen. The Dilemma explains how in the pursuit of profit, good managers leave their companies open to disruption. There's a fascinating article over at the Harvard Business Review that explains how disruption works, and how Jobs managed to solve the dilemma by focusing Apple on products rather than profit.

Submission + - Apple's Siri is as revolutionary as the Mac (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Thursday October 13, 2011 @02:48PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: "the desktop metaphor — that the Mac introduced all those years ago — has long been stretched past breaking point. Novice users often don't know where to begin. The touch paradigm introduced in the iPhone began to change that: it removed the intermediary of the mouse and the cursor. But even still, unnecessary complexity remains...

Siri is going to be the first step in fixing it.""

Submission + - Spotify to bait and switch? (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Friday July 22, 2011 @11:37AM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review, of all places, is running a story suggesting that Spotify may have to rely on a bait & switch strategy — or might have one forced upon it by the record labels. From the article: "Spotify gets all its content from the same place everyone else does –" the same industry that has forced price increases on other online services once they have become successful. That appears to be at least partly what happened with Netflix last week. At least in the case of the existing a la carte music services, if you don't like the new price, you don't have to buy the new track. In Spotify's world, if you don't like the new price, there goes your music library. Or, if Spotify tries to stand up for its users, the labels can just pull the songs and those songs simply disappear.""

Submission + - RIAA/MPAA: the greatest threat to tech innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren on Monday April 04, 2011 @02:18AM

TAGmclaren writes: The Harvard Business Review is running an article stating that it's not India or China that are the greatest threat to technological innovation happening in America. Rather, it's the "big content" players, particularly the movie and music industry. From the article: "the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. Example after example abounds of this attitude; whether it was the VCR which was "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone" as famed movie industry lobbyist Jack Valenti put it at a congressional hearing, or MP3 technology, which they tried to sue out of existence."

Submission + - Big content killing innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by TAGmclaren on Thursday March 31, 2011 @07:39PM

TAGmclaren writes: America is at risk of losing its place as the leading place to innovate — not because of China or India, but rather because of the big content industries like the music and movie industry. So says the Harvard Business Review. It's interesting to see a big business publication come down on the technology side. From the article: "despite making their living relying on it, the Big Content players do not understand technology, and never have. Rather than see it as an opportunity to reach new audiences, technology has always been a threat to them. "

Submission + - Big Content is strangling American innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Thursday March 31, 2011 @12:28PM

hype7 writes: "Harvard Business Review is running an article close to many slashdotter's hearts: the problems with "Big Content". They make the argument that all the measures that the movie and music industry are putting in place to protect their business models actually threatens to undermine the innovation engine that the US has built up in the tech space. Very interesting reading."

Submission + - The fall of Wintel and the rise of Armdroid

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday January 17, 2011 @07:22PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — "Armdroid"."

Submission + - The future of Android and Google (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Friday November 19, 2010 @05:02PM

hype7 writes: "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."

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