With the Tricorder X PRIZE Qualcomm Launches the New Era of Metadata Medicine

January 18th, 2012 – Forbes Columns

What do cadavers, Tricorders and Qualcomm have in common?  Only the biggest thing that’s happening in medical technology these days. And it’s not happening in a pharmaceutical research lab or at the National Institutes of Health, but at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

With the glitzy Vegas-style keynote announcement of the Tricorder X PRIZE at the CES, Paul Jacobs, CEO of wireless chip company Qualcomm [NASDAQ:QCOM]– not IBM [NYSE:IBM], Wellpoint [NYSE:WLP], or Pfizer [NYSE:PFE] — may well be remembered by history for launching the radical age of metadata medicine.

The Good News Behind the Zynga IPO And What it Says About the New Economy

December 18th, 2011 – Forbes Columns

With headlines featuring words like fizzle and slump, do we conclude from Friday’s “disappointing” IPO of Zynga [ZNGA:NASDAQ] that social media is a bubble that’s run its course?  Hardly.  We are witnessing the inverse: the real beginning.

By any reasonable business standard, especially in these dismal economic times, it is remarkable that a four-year old game company like Zynga can raise $1 billion, establishing a $9 billion market valuation.  It illustrates that something fundamental, and big, lies beneath.

Crowdsourcing Innovation In New York City: Cornell v Stanford

December 13th, 2011 – Forbes Columns

I know Mayor Bloomberg did not use the 21st century word “crowdsourcing” this past July in his innovation initiative speech.  He talked instead in old-speak, about providing “infrastructure upgrades” and enabling a “critical mass” of talent to allow New York City to reclaim “our title as the world capital of technological innovation.”

For those sleeping under a rock: Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal, contest really, is about the City giving away land (either Governors Island, the Navy Yard, or Roosevelt Island) and “up to $100 million in infrastructure upgrades.”  The prize, to be announced soon after the New Year, will go to a university with the best plan for bringing a brand spanking new Engineering and Applied Science campus into the heart of New York City.

The Relentless Pursuit of Magical Energy

October 28th, 2011 – Forbes Columns

I’m going to go out on a limb here with a prediction.  The energy world will look exactly the same the day after October 28th, 2011, as it did yesterday.  Why?  On October 28th we’re expecting a public demonstration of a “revolutionary” new energy device in Bologna, Italy.  The magic technology?  Another too-cheap-to-meter construct called the “e-cat” machine invented and promoted by Italian Andrea Rossi.  Cold fusion … again, but with an updated label; Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction. Will it change the world?  No.  Will it work?  Doubt it.