How many emails do you have in your inbox? In general, each one represents a task – something to read, a query to answer, a meeting to book, a bill to pay, a request to fulfill or deny, even a friend's post to like. Also on your to-do list: Facebook messages, LinkedIn intro requests, twitter direct messages....Whether it's a social-network message or a your-grandfather's-style email, it's all items to handle — all placed there by other people. Yet who prioritizes all of these? Who collects them all in one place or switches among them?Read more

In 2008, glass blower James McKelvey was unable to complete a $2,000 sale of his glassware because a customer could only pay by credit card. Frustrated, he discussed this with a friend, Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter. By the summer of 2009, Dorsey had prototyped a dongle and soon after, Square launched as a payments start-up targeting mainly the un-served micro-merchant space.Read more

Many of the problems in the world today persist because of a too-narrow interpretation of capitalism. Most businesses today are run based on the assumption that people are selfish and interested solely in maximizing their own profit. This is a very one-dimensional view of humans who in reality are very multidimensional. As much as selfishness is part of us, so is selflessness, but the selfless dimension is not taken into account in economic theory.Read more

With today’s economic uncertainty, some may question whether this is a good time to be discussing disruptive innovation in banking. I would argue there is no better time than now. For starters, the business models of the retail branch bank were developed decades ago and no longer fit most people’s lifestyles and needs. The world is changing rapidly but banking really hasn’t kept up with the pace.Read more

We love London.  My co-founder and I graduated from London Business School a year ago, united by the fact that we both love London’s business community, rich cultural diversity, and hub Read more

The eighth annual “Truffle 100” index, the benchmark ranking of France’s top 100 software companies compiled by Truffle Capital with support from Eric Besson, the French Minister for Industry, Energy and the Digital Economy, and in partnership with analysts at the CXP Centre for Software Evaluation, ought to be of great concern to the leading candidates in the French presidential race.Read more

In March 2008, The Sunday Times newspaper in London published a remarkable story. A married British couple had unexpectedly found themselves facing a monthly mobile phone bill of £11,000 (more than $17,000 at current exchange rates). The wife had used her husband’s phone, which had an unlimited broadband package, to download four episodes of the television show Friends. This would have been covered by the price of the broadband package, except that the husband had travelled to Germany without realizing that the 12-hour download was still underway.Read more

The Internet get started in Russia long ago, well before the Web.  When I first landed in Russia back in April of 1989, there was barely a functioning long-distance telephone system.  If you wanted to reach someone remote, you had to go through an operator, who would call you back once she found a line.Read more

Some 9,500 banks from around the world are currently meeting in Toronto to discuss the state of the industry at an annual industry gathering called Sibos.  Amongst the topics is “Where is the Growth in 2012 and Beyond.” Banks need to consider the answer carefully.  They risk becoming boring utilities, ceding the most interesting --and potentially most lucrative-- customer-facing parts of the business to nontraditional players.Read more

 It's fashionable these days to talk about personal attention as a commodity or even a currency. But in fact, it's a different kind of phenomenon, one that is becoming more interesting now that the Internet makes it easier for businessesto pay attention to individual customers on a grand scale...even as many companies sometimes confuse attention with intention (to buy).  While companies (and some people) seek attention because they expect to earn money through it, many individuals value attention as something intrinsically desirable in itself.Read more