Barclaycard Turns to Crowd-sourcing to Build a Better Credit Card. Who’s afraid of AmazonSupply? It’s no surprise online retail giant Amazon.com entered the industrial market in 2012 with the launch of Amazonsupply.com. After all, the market for U.S. industrial supplies is more than $150 billion. It may appear Amazon and other industrial merchant sites will create downward price pressure and increased competition for wholesalers and distributors, eventually eroding their margins. While this will put pressure on margins, growing acceptance of the Web as a channel in business-to-business transactions could offset and potentially outweigh that effect for some smart B2B suppliers. Today, B2B sellers differentiate pricing through customer-specific negotiations. Sellers offer and buyers accept different prices reflecting the relative costs and value of the relationships. The emergence of industrial merchant websites seeks to disrupt existing customer-supplier relationships resulting in more transparency and consistency in pricing.
Last camera firm sees out final sad day - Top stories. How To Publish a "Minimum Viable Magazine" Online. Digital Does Delivery: Google's New Same Day Service Trial Signals Web's Next Era. Mapping The Next Three Decades of Health Technology. When science fiction films depict the future, the best writers and directors are often less concerned with accurately predicting how specific technologies might reshape the world than they are with confronting the moral or philosophical quandaries of present day.
It’s what makes those stories compelling--and relatable. When futurists attempt to tell us how (and when) technology leaps will occur, they’re not only speculating about what we’re capable of achieving in the coming decades but also imploring us to prepare--scientifically and psychologically--for those events. Envisioning Technology, the firm behind the massive infographic explorations of the future of emerging technology and the future of education technology, is, as you might guess, run by a futurist: Michell Zappa.
Apple in talks to create internet radio station. E-book settlement has publishing world in turmoil. Publishing insiders worry that a decisive court ruling benefiting retailer Amazon.com Inc. will undermine an industry already struggling with the transition to e-books.
A federal court Thursday approved a settlement between the Justice Department and three of the country's largest publishers, who were accused of colluding to fix prices for e-books. Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers and Simon & Schuster were alleged to have conspired with Apple Inc. to control the price of e-books sold online as part of a larger effort to end Amazon's online dominance. Amazon to Apple: the game starts now. The key moment in Jeff Bezos's keynote announcing Amazon's new Paperwhite Kindle and Kindle Fire models came before he introduced any of the new hardware.
"People don't want gadgets any more," Bezos declared, explaining why the Kindle Fire had succeeded where other gadgety Android tablets had failed. "They want services that improve over time. They want services that improve every day, every week, and every month. " At Procter & Gamble, the Innovation Well Runs Dry. For much of its history, Procter & Gamble (PG) didn’t just launch new products, it created new product categories, from the first mass-produced disposable diapers to Crest teeth-whitening kits.
That’s one reason P&G has more than 1,000 Ph.D.’s among the 8,000 employees at its 26 innovation facilities around the world. “P&G is largely a branded science company,” says Larry Huston, former innovation officer at P&G who’s now managing director of 4inno, a consulting firm. Lately, though, there’s been a dearth of pioneering brands emerging from the world’s largest consumer-products company.
How Google Builds Its Maps—and What It Means for the Future of Everything - Alexis C. Madrigal. An exclusive look inside Ground Truth, the secretive program to build the world's best accurate maps.
Behind every Google Map, there is a much more complex map that's the key to your queries but hidden from your view. The deep map contains the logic of places: their no-left-turns and freeway on-ramps, speed limits and traffic conditions. This is the data that you're drawing from when you ask Google to navigate you from point A to point B -- and last week, Google showed me the internal map and demonstrated how it was built. It's the first time the company has let anyone watch how the project it calls GT, or "Ground Truth," actually works. Kindle – Firing up a revolution « Buy, Use, Love. Transforming an industry that has been incrementally improving on a business model and technology for over 500 years is not for the faint of heart.
Although it might still be too early to compare the impact of ebooks to that of the mechanical printing press (invented by Gutenberg in 1440), the Amazon Kindle seems up to the task. I ordered my 2nd generation Kindle as soon as it was released in early 2009 (yup, I paid the premium) and it has fundamentally changed how I read. I read a lot more now than I used to, I never lose my page, I always have a dictionary at hand, I can carry a whole slew of books on every vacation, I beam with pride (at least I used to, back in 2009) when people ask to take a closer look and I try to sell a Kindle to everyone who cares to listen. Yup, you guessed it… the Amazon Kindle far exceeds my buy, use, love threshold. Can Apple, Amazon and Google's new mini-tablets revive the news industry? Suddenly, tablets will be affordable and portable.
Photograph: Michaela Rehle/Reuters Any news executives confident that the answer to falling print sales is more people using tablet computers should be delighted by the next six weeks or so. On Thursday, Amazon's Jeff Bezos is expected to unwrap a new version of the 7in Kindle Fire tablet, and even to extend sales beyond the US into Europe – after opening up its app store here last week. Google has been selling its 7in Nexus 7 tablet since July in the US and Europe. Business Model Innovation Japan. 2009 Subaru Forester - 2009 Motor Trend Sport/Utility Of The Year. It would be easy to say that this year's winner is a knee-jerk reaction, that the editors of Motor Trend responded to the skyrocketing cost of gasoline like the rest of the driving public by abruptly abandoning the traditional SUV formula for something smaller, more fuel-efficient, greener, more, well, forest-y.
It would be easy to categorize our selection of the Subaru Forester as Motor Trend's 2009 Sport/Utility of the Year as a choice made solely at the pump, but it wouldn't be true. Sure, our Subaru Forester 2.5XT contender posted the best observed fuel-economy numbers (16.0 mpg) for an all-wheel-drive SUV in this year's competition, but that's not the whole story. So how does a small, quirky, former airplane manufacturer from the Gunma prefecture of Japan finish first among surprise offerings from established players and bold moves by newcomers? How does it beat a chest-thumping, head-turning macho mobile known as the BMW X6? Just how does the Subaru Forester do it?
Intuit's High-Velocity Experiments. Aug12 Point: Fast-cycle experiments let companies create the best product/service offering with the least risk.
Story: At the World Innovation Forum, Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit, described his company’s culture of high-velocity experimentation. Intuit uses an experiment-driven decision-making process throughout the organization. Harley Davidson – Born to be HOG wild « Buy, Use, Love. I can’t think of any other brand that generates as much buy, use, love passion as Harley Davidson.
In a time when ‘American manufacturing’ is becoming an oxymoron, Harley Davidson is proudly carrying the banner of American innovation, industry and irreverence. Regardless of all the well-heeled Harley owners who just tootle around on weekends, Harley Davidson represents the irrepressible American spirit of legend that has captured the world’s imagination. Over the years, Harley Davidson bikes have been vilified, glorified and caricatured in American popular culture but the sheer resilience of their iconic image is the envy of corporate America. Since opening it’s doors in 1903, the company has seen many highs and lows and even some near-death experiences. 60% Of Netflix Subscribers Stream Films Online — Online Video News. Netflix – Flicks directly on the net… at last « Buy, Use, Love. Lately, I’ve been running errands to tie up the loose ends of a construction project at home and I keep driving past the now defunct ‘Hollywood Video’ store in my neighborhood.
As you might expect, the Product Manager in me looks at this abandoned store and can’t help thinking about the innovation and creative destruction delivered to my neighborhood by… you guessed it… Netflix. I have to admit that, over the years, I was only a sporadic member of the videos-by-mail, no-late-fees Netflix service. That’s because I was always able to find time to watch movies in the theater and so waiting for movies to release on video and be shipped to my house didn’t make much sense. However, all that changed recently when I discovered the instant gratification of Netflix’s video streaming service. Subaru – Love on four wheels « Buy, Use, Love. The Stories. Marc Andreessen on Why Software Is Eating the World.
Until It Rebuilt with a Better Blueprint. 9 Ways Supermarkets Are Going High Tech. An Airline Industry Disrupter With a Netflix Model : Innovation. Sadly for RIM, fond memories aren't enough to stop the decline and fall of BlackBerry. Bye Bye BlackBerry. How Long Will Apple Last? Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years. RIM's downward spiral visualized. 4 Reasons Microsoft is Coming Back in a Big Way. Panera's experiment in human nature: Let customers decide what to pay. RIM chiefs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie's best quotes. 6 Hot Digital Trends Transforming the Fashion Industry. Here's Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years. Better, Faster, Cheaper Is Not Innovation: Kodak and Microsoft. 5 Startups Infusing Social Good with Innovation. Once the dust of Social TV hype settles, content recommendation will be changed forever (2/2) Collaborative design, and the social TV case study.