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- How to Make U.S. Financial Regulation Work Again
Probably the most important thing that financial regulation needs to accomplish is to return the financial services industry to its true function, facilitating economic growth for society and investors, rather than creating wealth principally for financial services sector employees. I suggest refocusing the industry on economic growth, providing more appropriate risk reward tradeoffs including greater penalties for financial abuse, greater transparency, and more complex capital adequacy assessment of non-banking institutions in an increasingly wired world.
BusinessWeek.com, April 6, 2009.
- Google Loses a Round in Sponsored Search Litigation
The 2nd circuit appellate court upheld an appeal ... sort of ... and remanded a pro-Google decision back to the lower court for reconsideration. The case involved Rescuecom’s suit against Google, arising from the fact that Google searches return competitors’ URLs even when Rescuecom’s name is an explicit search term. I am not surprised. Issues in sponsored search, including misdirection of consumers to inappropriate websites and abuse of trademarks on the one hand, and freedom of speech and consumer choice on the other, continue to be debated and continue to be assessed in the courts, and questions about Google’s sponsored search are far from resolved.
TechCrunch, April 5, 2009.
- Finance: Cleaning Up After the ‘Perfect Storm’
Numerous factors led to the 2008-2009 global market meltdown. Some had to do with regulatory policy on both sides of the aisle that encouraged home ownership even when it required irresponsible levels of individual debt. Some had to do with a failure of regulatory policy and an ideological belief that markets were always self-correcting and self-regulating. Some were a result of a nearly universal social acceptance of paper profits as creating real value. Perhaps most fundamental was the fact that many, on Wall Street and off, forgot the true role of financial services and of capital markets, which is to fund growth and create economic wealth for society, not profits for individuals in the financial services sector.
BusinessWeek.com, April 2, 2009.
- Steel Cage Debate On the Future of Online Advertising: Danny Sullivan Vs. Eric Clemons
I engage in a polite debate with Danny Sullivan, a strident defender of and ardent believer in the primacy of online advertising as a revenue source. Ultimately, Danny refuses to accept a wager that online advertising will provide less than 20% of revenues from all online applications, excluding revenues from direct sale of physical goods.
TechCrunch, March 28, 2009.
- Why Advertising is Failing On The Internet
Advertising cannot be expected to provide the bulk of the revenues for internet websites. It will be necessary to find ways to charge for content or for other forms of value creation. I review numerous alternative business models that corporations can use to generate online revenues, describe recent experience with them, and make predictions going forward.
TechCrunch, March 22, 2009.
- What an Anti-Trust Case Against Google Might Look Like
It is possible to enjoy monopoly power without actually having a monopoly, as the experience of computerized travel agent reservations systems in the 1980s showed. Google may indeed enjoy monopoly power over online sponsored search, it may indeed be exploiting that monopoly power, and the Department of Justice may indeed choose to provide judicial relief. I describe a plausible outline for the argument that the DoJ may choose to use.
TechCrunch.com, March 1, 2009.
- Chinese Students Want to Know: How Do I get Rich
Strikingly, many young, talented, educated, and gifted Chinese students still want financial services careers in the United States. Yes, the opportunities to fund corporate growth and to greatly increase social wealth through the creation of a massive Chinese middle class are boundless in China, but the opportunities to amass personal wealth as US financial services personnel appear far greater to these students. Increasing their own individual wealth rather than increasing economic growth has become more attractive to these students, even if it requires leaving their homeland. Capitalism is, truly, returning to China.
Forbes.com, February 27, 2009.
- Another Point of View: The Internet is Neither Friend nor Foe of Participatory Democracy
The election of President Obama may not indicate that the net will elevate the standard of political debate. It is attractive to argue that the internet provides individuals unlimited access to information, which they can carefully evaluate, assess, and compare with information from other sources, eliminating all effects of reportorial bias. It is attractive for liberals to argue that President Obama won the 2008 presidential election solely because his arguments were stronger than those of the opposition. It appears equally likely that (1) the Obama campaign mastered online fundraising first, but the Republican Party will catch up quickly and (2) candidate Obama’s sound bites (“Yes We Can” and “Change We Can Believe In”) were more effective than those of the opposition (“Mavericks” and “It’s not our fault; remember you’re not running against Bush”). The impact of the internet will be understood in future campaigns, and this may not automatically yield a return to the Golden Age of Athenian Democracy. Lincoln-Douglas debate has remained the standard for political debate for a century and a half; no one expects anything similar from the Palin-Biden debate!
HuffingtonPost.com, February 13, 2009.
- What I learned at Davos: How Networking and Feedback Loops Can Make a Better World
Critics often complain that the World Economic Forum in Davos is little more than an opportunity for world leaders to network and for the rest of us to stargaze. Having squeaked into Davos with a last-minute invitation to participate in several panels, I learned that networking can be very valuable (what a surprise!), and that network-induced feedback loops are the best way to create highly effective social systems out of less-than-perfect individuals.
TechCrunch.com, February 8, 2009.
- Delighting the Newly Empowered Customer
Modern technology allows firms to offer an ever-increasing variety of goods and services, but until recently consumer information came largely from advertising, advertising rewarded scale, and consumers’ choice remained limited. With vast amounts of detailed and reliable information available from online reviews and consumer-generated content, consumer informedness has enabled resonance marketing. This allows consumers to trade out in pursuit of products that offer perfect fit with their individual preferences and allows firms to focus on high margin sweet spots in place of low margin mass-market fat spots. Most firms need guidance on how to alter their marketing strategies and how to augment their portfolio of offerings.
Forbes.com, December 12, 2007.
- Web Selling, What’s smart, What’s dumb
Forbes provides an online slideshow of products that reflect resonance marketing ideas.
Forbes.com, December 12, 2007.
- Harnessing Social Networks
Online social networks and community content websites, from Facebook and YouTube to LinkedIn, are praised as having the potential to transform the interactions among individuals in social settings and in corporations. More careful analysis suggests that directly monetizing social networks as instruments of brand management will be quite complex and that many forms of advertising will not readily move to social networks. You would no more try to sell insurance during a best man’s speech at your friends’ wedding than you would try to sell products during online social interactions. Social networks have considerable value, but the uses currently attempted may be inappropriate and recent acquisition prices may prove unrealistic.
Forbes.com, August 22, 2007.
- Resonance Blog
Resonance Marketing in the Age of the Truly Informed Consumer:
Creating Profit through Differentiation and Delight
- Uncertainty Blog
Taking the Uncertainty out of Uncertainty: The Power of
Pattern Recognition and Learning from History
- Green Blog
The Environmental Prinsoners' Dilemma - Or - We're All in
this Together: Can I Trust You to Figure it Out?
- Online Social Networking Blog
The Future of Advertising and the Value of Social Networks
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