Business Quests in the Information Age

Beautiful presentation by Lawrence Lessig at TED

With interesting examples extracted from his book "Free culture", Lessig makes a powerful case for the need to have a more flexible framework of managing intellectual property rights if we are to empower, not stiffle, creativity and innovation. His points are particularly important when one considers how scientific knowledge grew in the Ancient worlds (China, Mesopotamia, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Persians, Greeks, Romans), in the Islamic Golden Age or after the Age of Enlightenment: innovation relied on the sharing and reuse (remixing Lessig would say) of previous advances.

Of course we must ackowledge the relevance of some form of protection of intellectual property acquired after substantial investment of time, money and energy. So it is essentially a matter of balance that I believe Lessig's beautiful creation (the Creative Commons system) provides. Quite clearly,

• the mass adoption of tools for producing, processing and distributing (sharing) digital content,
• the read / write or remix culture ,
• the empowerment of creative masses
• the challenge to established empires of content (organized as guilds whether they are called RIAA or MPAA or otherwise),

all have huge implications for the media industries and all the marketing, PR and communications models. Something that is definitely worth taking into account in businesses like Vanksen or BuzzParadise.

Matthieu Ricard at Google

Interesting insights with a strong scientific and philosophical basis. Also interesting is the fact that Ricard was invited to speak at Google. What would happen in the economy if we had truly happy people at work? What would the impact be on our societies and on global issues facing mankind?

Confidence can be a double edged sword

In my projects I often work with entrepreneurs who seem to consider it vital to show absolute confidence in their business idea. They should listen to this testimony.

Why Google is prime target for Microsoft and Yahoo

Key differences in the revenue generation of online marketing services show why Google is the player to stop for Microsoft and Yahoo... probably not only for them as marketing budgets are gradually being reallocated to better cover interactive online and on-demand channels and practices.

clipped from www.fool.com Microsoft Must Kill Google, Now Marketing revenues at Yahoo! inched 13% higher to $1.5 billion. What's troubling is that while ad money from Yahoo!'s own websites climbed 24% higher to $922 million, the company's fledgling collection of third-party sites that regurgitate Yahoo! ads posted a 1% decrease in revenues to $622 million. Microsoft's online-services revenues climbed to $671 million, but $80 million of that came from the aQuantive acquisition that closed during the period. Ad revenues would have climbed just 25% higher before factoring in that $6 billion deal. That's still respectable, although a major downer is that the company posted an operating loss of $264 million in this division. Google put up a whopping $4.2 billion in site-related revenues for the quarter, up 57% over the prior year. That impressive figure is the result of a 65% surge on its own sites to $2.7 billion and a 40% increase through its network third-party sites to $1.5 billion.