DLD 2012 has started today in Munich and runs until Jan. 24th. In it, people as diverse as Sheryl Sandberg, Arianna Huffington, the Dyson family and Hiroshi Mikitani share their views on what matters to them. The themes are varied and the program is packed with interesting talks and panels. In the age of multi-disciplinary events, this is one of the best.
Interesting food for thought on Apple’s capital allocation issues and it ties well with our last two posts on capital allocation. Just a reminder: this post is highlighted exclusively for overall capital allocation policies that might be applied to other investments. Buysiders.com doesn’t advise on specific stocks nor do we make any recommendations, as highlighted in the post.
We highlight three articles about old truths and new business models. First the truth about economic models, according to the Scientific American magazine; second an old and huge sector disrupted by tiny start-ups; and third an entirely new business model that is becoming very relevant.
We’ve read two stories yesterday that “clicked” together. One was Seth Godin’s post on media choices and how one must now deal with scarcity of attention. Another was a NYT story on the Disney deal with Youtube. Disney has incredible content, but they don’t have kids’ “ears” anymore – incredibly enough for people over 30, Youtube does. On the other hand, Disney brings Youtube credibility with advertisers and families (the latter worry their kids only go on Youtube to watch what they perceive as useless, mindless, purposeless videos). What can we do as long-term investors? Probably nothing, and that’s OK.
Always great to be able to catch up on reading, or almost, and here are a few articles that caught our attention – along with two book lists bound to make us fall behind in our reading again.
Huge, sprawling article on Business Insider about Groupon since the early beginnings. It’s telling when an article about the big article is 3 pages long. Normally we would recommend reading the summary for conciseness – and because the day only has 24h – but the big article is a keeper. They got almost all of it right, except for the culture change part. It is more important, and far more disruptive, than they make it seem.
Buysiders.com is about the work done by all of us at IP, but this is a personal note – instead of the normal “we”, this post is about something I’ve watched today: a 1987 “product concept” video that’s simply impressive, not just because the “Knowledge Navigator” is a wonderful vision, but also because we’re not that far away from something like this. Think iPad + the Siri app. Sure enough, the 1987 video was Apple’s. Prof. Sasser’s point: seeing things that others didn’t was nice, but seeing it through and changing the world was Steve Jobs’ genius.
We’re at Day Two of the InfoTrends conference in São Paulo about Social Media. It’s been pretty interesting so far. Today we’ll try some live-blogging, and Monday we’ll post the notes from Day One. Just a teaser for the weekend: Julian Assange was the keynote speaker for day one.
Two stories in the “Social Media IPO Candidates” realm got us thinking that corporate governance might be under fire. Zynga is reportedly creating a triple-class share structure and Groupon has apparently engaged – voluntarily or not doesn’t matter – in pre-IPO marketing during its quiet period. “Buyer beware” indeed.
Steve Jobs resigned as Apple CEO yesterday, intends to stay on as Chairman. Sad news and nothing much to comment – the praise has been doled out before here. We only wish him the best and highlight a few links with amazing, heartfelt reaction around the web.
