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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More