PolicyBlog

Michael Porter in a Harvard Business Review article last January wrote about how companies create value.  His focus was on whether companies had an outdated view of value creation that was too narrowly focused on short-term financial performance.    His article explained that key consumer needs are connected to broader societal issues in most cases.  For example, there are a wide array of consumer needs in the health care space and broadband technology provides a platform for addressing many... Read More

I am posting some observations from Marissa Mitrovich - Director, Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility.  She was at this year’s SXSW Interactive, and blogged about some of the things she saw:   In the technology industry we have been using the word “convergence” in our everyday conversations for many years, but this term has recently crossed over into the mainstream.  Well, maybe not the word itself, but the act of cross-platform technology consumption.  Last week I attended the 3 Screen... Read More

I am posting some observations from Marissa Mitrovich - Director, Public Policy and Corporate Responsibility.  She was at this year’s SXSW Interactive, and blogged about some of the things she saw:   Earlier this month I attended the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX.  This section of the SXSW Festival has exploded over recent years, now accommodating approximately 25,000 attendees on numerous campuses around Austin, TX.  I joined web designers, developers, venture capitalists,... Read More

I thought this article on the “visionary”, Roger Fidler, who was allegedly behind the concept of the tablet, was very interesting.  Not because it proves he invented the device or is laying claim to it.  He’s not.  What I found most intriguing was this point regarding Mr. Fidler:“But Fidler, in what amounts to an extraordinary act of taking the high road, said he holds no hard feelings. Really. He points out that he did not initiate the legal war underway. He is not jealous of Apple’s success.... Read More

You know we often say in the Information and Communications (ICT) sector (the companies who largely make up the Internet ecosystem) that change is rapid and dynamic in the sector.  We suggest that rigid government rules or mandates simply can’t keep up and if they are too inflexible they can undermine the dynamism that is heart of the industry.Is that really true?  Is change really that rapid?I got to thinking about that and discovered that yes, in fact, change is rapid and not only in our... Read More

An article by Joshua Topolsky in the Washington Post (“Software — Not Hardware — Is the Star of the Show”) raises some interesting points about the intersection of devices and software.   My sense he is both right and wrong – and he misses a key part in all of this - the networks.   It clearly is true that hardware is less center stage than it used to be but I think this more about the “old” hardware meaning desk top PCs and even increasingly lap tops.   Those well-established devices are far... Read More

I don’t know who said, “It can be dangerous to make predictions . . . especially about the future,” but I suspect that if I did a search I’d find it was Yogi Berra.  Making predictions aren't always what they are cracked up to be, in part because too often they involve simply identifying technologies or uses that are growing today and “predicting” that they will grow larger in the future. I even tried my hand at this earlier this year when I offered some prognostications about future technology... Read More

Monday of this week was the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph.  It is hard now to understand how significant this event was.  Until the telegraph came in to being, it was impossible for messages to be relayed to people who were long distances apart any faster than the speed of a horse.  Yes, there were earlier devices to transmit communications over long distances that allowed messages to be sent through the air via visible signs such as flags, fire pots or... Read More

I asked a member of my staff, Matthew Schwartz, to write a blog post on the anniversary of the printing of the first Gutenberg Bible, and to offer his perspectives on it. His thoughts are below.   The words you are reading right now did not exist just a few moments ago. The time from their inception as a few electrical signals in my brain to their current reality as words on your computer, possibly hundreds or thousands of miles away, can be measured in mere hours (and that’s only because it... Read More