entrepreneurship

Data: The Ultimate Shared Asset

by Dan Robles on April 29, 2011

People always ask me how The Value Game will work and how The Value Game will scale, and how The Value Game will make money.  These are great questions, albeit straight from the b-school crib sheet; good questions nonetheless.

At first glance, The Value Game as we are deploying in Social Flights looks like a rich kids party barge.  The idea is that people can share an airplane just like they did with that stretch limo on prom night.  Yes, the idea is the same – the jet is a shared asset and status on prom night is special.

The Value Game also produces a lot of very important data that is owned by the players.  So when the passengers arrive at their destination, their data can now transform the hotel into a shared asset. As such, a new Value Game plays again.  If the players own their data, and they only share it with the other players in the associated Value Game, they can command substantial value for the collaborative purchase of hotel rooms – or any shared asset.

Likewise, the players will need restaurants, tour guides, golf courses, concert tickets, entertainment, etc.  Their data – if they own it – is their discount coupon…like a Group Coupon, except relevant to the need and exercisable on-demand.  By the time the trip is over, their Value Game data can result in hundreds or thousands of dollars in discounts for the individuals in a travel tribe if, and only if they own their data.

The next time they want to take a trip, their data is not only a discount coupon; it becomes a passport to opportunities that money cannot buy. In the End Game of the Value Game, data are the shared asset.  This works if, and only if people own their data and they can share or restrict it from view of others.

Seriously, think about that for a minute.

You give your data away for free.  Companies collect this data and they have no intention of sharing it with you.  Data is a multi-billion dollar industry.  Why?

Aren’t most life lessons about figuring out who is NOT playing The Value Game and avoiding those people and situations?

Read More

A Definition for Innovation Economics

by Dan Robles on November 26, 2009

wikipedia(Editors Note: The following is too good to leave on Wikipedia. Underlines are this editor’s emphasis – sounds like conversational currency to me):

Innovation economics is an economic doctrine that reformulates the traditional model of economic growth so that knowledge, technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation are positioned at the center of the model rather than seen as independent forces that are largely unaffected by policy.

Innovation economics is based on two fundamental tenets. One is that the central goal of economic policy should be to spur higher productivity and greater innovation. Second, markets relying on price signals alone will not always be as effective as smart public-private partnerships in spurring higher productivity and greater innovation. This is in contrast to the two other conventional economic doctrines, neoclassical economics and Keynesian economics.

Innovation economics can be summarized as follows:

[click to continue…]

Read More

Business Week: They Trust Me, I Trust Them

November 17, 2009

One of my favorite aggregation sites is Business Week Exchange. To me BX represents a knowledge inventory. Everyone who posts to this site is a media maven, social influencer, and trust agent. Each one represents a galaxy of relationships, experiences, and followers. All the categories are sourced by these users. All of the articles are sourced and often written by these users. All the trending data are produced by the users. By far, my highest QUALITY followers come from BX; not Twitter, not Facebook, and not Friendfeed.

Read the full article →

Set the Data Free, Please

September 11, 2009

People pay money to talk to each other. Other people want to control how when and how much people can talk to each other. The battlefront is technology, like rockem-sockem robots, technologies duke it out in this trillion dollar struggle to control our conversations.

Read the full article →