Future of The NewsPaper Industry

Jeff Bezos has stirred up a lot of interest in the News Paper Industry by acquiring “The Washington Post” in his individual capacity. There are a lot of expectations now from him and Washington Post to define the future of this industry. If he succeeds to turn-around the loss making paper, that could pave the way for the other players in the industry to follow suit. If he fails to turn this around, people think that it could very well signal the end of an era. As part of an experiment, I thought what would make me love my newspaper […]

Some Advice for Start-ups with Ad based Biz Models

I believe that start-ups that are working on ad-based revenue models are in for a rude shock. In my opinion, this model has lead to the demise of one too many interesting start-ups. Some reasons for me to having arrived at this decision are as below: Advertising industry itself is going through a major tectonic shift and will need to re-discover itself in a new avatar before it can support any new business model. Having an ad-based revenue model is worse than having no revenue model at all as it provides start-ups with an illusion of revenue sooner than it […]

Lessons from a Failed (Billion Dollar) Business Model Innovation Attempt

In May this year, Better Place, an auto tech company filed for bankruptcy, burning close to a billion dollars. They had a brilliant solution to a complex problem. Their idea was to replace fossil fuels with batteries – literally. What this meant was that as you re-fuel your cars with gasoline, you could get your batteries changed at a fuel station. This was in stark contrast to all the other start-ups in this space, who have been working on increasing the range of their batteries to go longer distances or increase the speed at which one could charge the batteries […]

First Step in the Journey Towards Becoming a Real-time Business

There is a lot of talk about Real-time data and how real-time data can provide organizations to be able to respond in near real-time to business events. However, to realize such a vision, there is a lot that needs to change in the way we do business. One of the most basic thing that needs to change is how we run our business itself. Most organizations currently operate in the mode where the decision making sits at the top of the hierarchy. We have a C-Suite where we have the Chief Executives, who decide the strategy and roll-it out for […]

Crowd Funding Platforms and Banks

There has been a consistent growth in the number of Crowd-funding platforms all around the world. This is quite understandable given that they address a niche segment of the market that no other financial system has been able to address well. Some of these crowd funding platforms are now moving from crowd-funding (in lieu of kind & merchandise) to becoming crowd investing platform (in lieu of equity). What surprises me is the fact that banking institutions have not led the way and adopted this model so far but look at these as competition or threat. If I were leading a digital channel for a […]