In our blog “What’s A Unit of Trust Worth These Days’ we said a new generation of technology and services, for instance electronic medical records, will find it difficult to gain consumer traction until there is some mechanism that accounts for individual authentication , what we called the “trust thing”. How do we know that people (or companies) on the internet are who or what they purport to be?  How do you know that the doctor giving you online medical advice is really a qualified doctor? How do you know that the eBay vendor will really send you the widget you purchased? This is equally the problem in the offline world, particularly the finance industry where, by definition, the fractional reserve banking system is based on trust. But at least you can get some comfort by walking into a brick-n-mortar bank, and yelling at the manager, or filing a lawsuit on a tangible entity. Not so with online activity. 

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Filed Under Business Models, Intangible Assets, Internet Company, Internet Trends & Drivers

Why Would Investment Bankers Embrace Social Media During a Downturn?

I was thrilled to be asked by Bob London, a friend of 2i, to offer my perspective on the effect of the recession on my investment banking practice. You can read the article in Bob’s Executive Perspectives Blog or below.

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Filed Under Business Models, Intangible Assets, Internet Company, Internet Trends & Drivers, Recession

Sometimes a killer-app is just what the name says – a killer-app . . . . 

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Filed Under Business Models, Internet Trends & Drivers