In the early 1900s, feathered hats were all the rage. The bigger the better! In fact, some sported more than feathers. The expensive versions could sport a full taxidermy bird of paradise … or at least its head. As you might guess, there was a massive sustainability problem with bird…

The debate over privacy rights has devolved into a polarized and unproductive shouting match between two opposing points of view. On one side is Silicon Valley, who believes that the benefits of innovation trump any quaint notions of “private” lives. Privacy rights get in our way! On the other is…

A statistical analysis of 100 huge organizations with surprising results — “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” — Warren Buffet It’s always nice to have the Oracle of Omaha give a ringing endorsement for your profession. Among many things, I consider myself a professional…

What makes a platform so appealing is its ability to scale. By aggregating a few large chunks of demand, and many smaller ones, a single platform can dominate an entire market category. …

What can these geeky statistical artifacts tell us about risk in a platform strategy? We’ve already seen how marketing has fumbled the distinction between a “fat tail” and a “long tail,” but what does it really matter? All sales are positive events, aren’t they? Perhaps not. When we see all…

Neither the “long tail” nor the “fat tail” are new ideas. Both ideas come from statistics — specifically, they are easy words laypeople (non-mathematicians) can use to visualize a statistical distribution. Let’s do that. Imagine a bell curve — the “normal” distribution you learned about in high school — and…

Everett Rogers was not an engineer. That might seem odd to most technologists. Since 1962, they’ve used his groundbreaking idea — The Diffusion of Innovations — to track the introduction and spread of revolutionary technologies through a population. Iconic examples of the so-called S-curve permeate techno-lore: Refrigerators, color televisions, microwave…

The Gartner Hype Cycle is a brilliant piece of marketing, and it’s a boon to consultants everywhere, but it’s not going to help you make decisions. …