As a teenager I had the habit of asking myself odd questions. One of the most enduring of those “questions to myself” involved asking if there was some possible mathematical order to hideously complex physical phenomena like smoke rising from a cigarette. My question remained unanswered for decades until in 1987
Co-opetition How can a new small company quickly establish leverage over its competitors? One way…
Social entrepreneurship is an approach by start-up companies and entrepreneurs, in which they develop, fund and implement solutions to social, cultural, or environmental issues. The Camp in Aix has made social entrepreneurship a key part of their program. My students and I worked with Enactus, the international non-profit group which helps develop SE projects world-wide.
After watching “The Great Hack” on Netflix I am appalled by the absence of any moral compass at Cambridge Analytica, which transformed Big Data into a political weapon. Other disturbing examples are Uber’s former corporate culture and Facebook’s collusion with CA in abusing our privacy. These cases are prima facie evidence of the crucial need and the opportunity to integrate the Humanities and ethics with deep technology development. I began my career as a Humanities graduate at Intel Corporation working closely with Ivy League MBA’s and senior engineers. We shared our knowledge and learned together to enable the company to excel. The best companies are those grounded in an appreciation of human values, companies that seek out Humanities graduates with a passion for technology to balance out their teams.
Since Facebook announced its new Libra currency and mobile payments scheme, the global reaction has been very mixed. Libra is not truly a cryptocurrency though it will use blockchain. It will be pegged to a reserve currency, which cryptocurrencies are not. Libra will “potentially” be governed by an association independent of Facebook, though that association remains non-binding and sketchy at this point. Potential regulatory issues abound around the World, and Facebook is currently not viewed very favorably by many governments. But most interesting to me, Libra appears to be modeled after Kenya’s M-Pesa mobile payments system, the world’s leading mobile payments system, invented by mobile carrier Safaricom. Then I asked myself if Facebook, knowing that it needs to move away from selling personal data, has seized on Safaricom’s M-Pesa as its new revenue model.
Welcome to Mayo615’s Odyssey to France and the first of our Tuesday weekly updates. We invite you to subscribe to our YouTube Channel and follow our weekly updates. In this Week One update we will focus on my first Big Idea, and how I achieved it. I will also discuss my three most important key takeaways from that experience. We hope that you find this video helpful in achieving your own Big Ideas and goals. So here we go.
I want to return to France to give back my experience, skills, and technical knowledge to the country of my heritage. France’s industrial economy is in the doldrums, but new policies are stimulating innovation, the key to economic growth and productivity, and technology industry leaders in France with strong technology industry backgrounds are looking to contribute to this new economy in France. I want to join them and give back.
At its inception, Uber touted itself as a shining example of the “sharing economy” described by Jeremy Rifkin, in this now famous book, The Third Industrial Revolution. As time has passed the reality has been radically at odds with a sharing economy. Among the many issues that have emerged has been the legacy of Uber’s ugly corporate culture, secret apps used to confound regulators, and to intimidate journalists, a Justice Department investigation of illegal practices, including 200 Uber employees conspiring together to attack Lyft’s operations. The proverbial chickens have come home to roost, as municipalities around the world have begun to regain control of transportation policy within their jurisdictions, and the inflated valuations of these unicorns begin to deflate.
For over a year now I have blogged here about the red flags flying about Travis Kalanick and Uber. Many investigative articles have been published over this time, in the New York Times and other publications, which have raised disturbing questions about Uber, Kalanick and some members of his team. The Board of Directors has finally taken action but it feels like its a day late and a dollar short. Why did it take so long? I have bluntly used the epithet that “Uber is Trump,” but now on reflection, it is more apt to describe Uber as Enron the sequel, and “deja vu all over again.” Remember the audio of two Enron electricity traders laughing about “screwing grandma?” That is Uber.
