Aug 102015
 
How I came to hate content

Every time a digital product manger says the word ‘content’, it makes me cringe. Sometimes, it’s appropriate, but mostly it’s a careless shorthand way of commodifying everything, with or without meaning. When I was younger content referred to the actual meaning of what you were painting, reading, making a film of, or whatever. I got […]

Mar 082013
 
International Women's Day

  So it’s international women’s day. As Adam Roberts says, I’m not so worried about that as there are 364 International Men’s Days. We’ve been thinking about women a lot at Bethnal Green Ventures. We’ve taken the apparently controversial decision to state “We particularly welcome applications from women” during our call for ideas. We’ve received […]

Mar 052013
 

  I’ve been thinking again, about grace as a combination of gratefulness and generosity. Not sure if it holds up, but I think there Generosity With our work at the Social Innovation Camp and Bethnal Green Ventures, we’ve found astoundingly generous people all over the world. From government workers willing to give up their time, […]

Feb 262013
 

  …with, perhaps, some lessons for most everything else. I went to the launch of my old dean Colin Mayer’s new book Firm Commitment a few days ago. I’ve just dipped into the book briefly but the associated lecture (and this article) got me thinking. The brief version of the lecture says, in essence, “The […]

Mar 012011
 

Difficulty in opportunity | Opportunity in difficulty There’s an old adage that the skeptic sees difficulty in every opportunity, while the entrepreneurs sees opportunity in every difficulty. Think about it. Imagine it’s 1998. Search sucks. Yahoo’s your best bet. Banner ads and the blink tag run rampant across the Internet. Pets.com has just closed its […]

Jun 012010
 

I got sent this article from the New York Times today. It was short, to the point, and completely missed the point, perhaps. What do you want to measure? Sure, of course, you want to know how much online buzz equates to rankings, but what does that really tell you of true value? I don’t […]

May 202010
 

Stop what you’re doing right now and to to http://www.rapportive.com/ and install the extension. What? You’re not using Chrome or Firefox? What the heck is it? It’s an extension to Chrome and/or Firefox that replaces the sidebar where the google ads turn up with information about the sender– specifically, their blog, twitter, linkedin, etc. You […]

Mar 172010
 

The Bill The Senate just passed the jobs bill as a bipartisan effort. Way to go. They’ve proved that members of Congress can actuall work on something together and come up with a workable solution. It contains some $20bn in additional funds for highway employment, and $15bn in tax breaks for employers who take on […]

Mar 162010
 

Situation I was working (actually, eating soup and planning my workday) at the British Library half an hour ago when the fire alarm went. We all packed up and left, quietly, orderly, in a very British fashion, milling around in the courtyard. I tweeted about it. Here’s the funny thing Potential Fire in a library? […]