Between the 1600s and the late 1800s, thousands of people set off from the edge of the new American civilisation and headed West. Driven by vision, stubborn determination or maybe just a pinch of peer pressure, they travelled across uncharted territory, forging new paths, discovering new places and dying in
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Orienting Teams around the Axis of Change
Tech is a very fluid and changing world, but one of the most lasting truths in technology is Conway’s Law. Any organization that designs a system will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure. “How do committees invent?“, Melvin Conway What does Conway’s
Continue readingHow Reliance Jio Disrupted Digital India
On a recent business trip to New Delhi, I was out for lunch with colleagues when conversation turned to the price of mobile data. Us foreigners at the table bemoaned the price-per-Gb in our home countries, meanwhile, the locals could barely contain their laughter… Overnight Success An overnight success in the
Continue readingThe Rise of the Blockchain
Within a few short years we could find our banking system is bankrupt. No, I’m not trying to predict another subprime mortgage collapse, and this isn’t another anti-Trump message of doom (although his lack of understanding of ‘the cyber’ and affinity with traditional business models will not help the United States
Continue readingWhy do people only read things that back up their way of thinking?
Remember when the internet was in its infancy? We all had to put up with little 468 x 90 banner ads everywhere you looked – and sometimes we clicked them because we didn’t know better. As time went on we grew smarter, we were able to tell the bad adverts
Continue readingGoogle Watch: Time to DuckDuckGo
Google do a lot of good things. They host free webfonts to make the web a nicer place to be. Their cloudy PaaS service, Engine Yard, gets rave reviews. Their maps are better than anyone’s, their mobile OS is the most popular in the world, and their photo hosting offer is
Continue readingThings I learned at my last job
Today I closed a chapter in my life. After nearly 4 years tenure at a company I wanted to reflect on the things I learned over that time. I have been very lucky to have a few excellent – world-class even – mentors here who have taught me things that will
Continue readingThe Sharing Economy
The ‘Sharing Economy’ is disrupting established industries and sending huge, powerful incumbents into a tizzy. Uber and AirBnB have shaken the taxi and hotel sectors, shifting power, control and profits from the RadioCabs and Hiltons of this world and into the hands of ordinary citizens armed with nothing more than a
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