Innovation & Entrepreneurship

Don Tapscott on mass collaboration

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Don Tapscott, writer, consultant, and speaker on business strategy and organizational transformation, and co-author of the bestseller Wikinomics, discusses his new book, Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. In the book, Tapscott and his co-author, Anthony Williams, document how businesses, governments, nonprofits, and individuals are using mass collaboration to change how we work, live, learn, create, and govern. On the podcast, he discusses an Iraq veteran whose start-up car company is “staffed” by over 45,000 competing designers and supplied by microfactories around the country. He also talks about how companies are using competitions for R&D, and how mass collaboration can improve government regulation and universities.

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Joanne McNeil on online introversion and curation

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Joanne McNeil, a science and technology writer living in Brooklyn, New York, and curator of Tomorrow Museum, a collection of images and speculative essays exploring how technology, science, and economics are affecting the fine arts, discusses online introversion and curation. McNeil discusses realspace introverts turned online extroverts, explains the lack of social media presence of many extroverts and celebrities, and parses the distinction between shyness and introversion. She also talks about Hanoi Wi-Fi and other technology encountered on her recent trip to Southeast Asia and addresses online curation, link blogs, and Tumblr.

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Nick Bilton on how technology creatively disrupts society

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Nick Bilton, Lead Technology Writer for The New York Times Bits blog and a reporter for the paper, discusses his new book, I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works. In the book, Bilton examines how technology is creatively disrupting society, business, and our brains. On the podcast, he talks about neuroplasticity and reading, a debate with George Packer about Twitter, innovators’ dilemmas in the porn industry, why many CEOs and movie producers bristle at how the future works, and “ricochet working.” He also discusses effects of combining human curation with computer algorithms, hyperpersonalization, informational veggies, and serendipity. He concludes with his theory about today’s news (and the reason he doesn’t worry about missing tweets): “If it’s important, it will find me.”

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Peter Sunde on Flattr

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Peter Sunde, co-founder of BitTorrent tracker The Pirate Bay and creator of Flattr, a new online social micropayments system, discusses Flattr. Sunde explains the Flattr concept, how it differs from previous micropayment platforms, and why it’s more meaningful than the Facebook “like” button. He also briefly discusses progress of the Pirate Bay case.

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Perry Chen on Kickstarter

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Perry Chen, co-founder and CEO of Kickstarter, an online platform for funding creative projects, discusses the enterprise. Chen talks about the inspiration behind Kickstarter and its business model, how project creators convince backers (not investors) to fund them, funding success rates, and the most interesting projects funded so far.

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Eric Frank on openly-licensed textbooks

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Eric Frank, Co-Founder and President of Flat World Knowledge, the leading publisher of commercial, openly licensed college textbooks, discusses the company and its business model, which he compares to that of Red Hat. In the podcast Frank addresses moral hazards of the traditional college textbook publishing model, the company’s genesis, products and services it offers, how it makes money, and why it appeals to students, professors, and authors.

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Clay Shirky on Cognitive Surplus

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Clay Shirky, adjunct professor at New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, discusses his new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Shirky talks about social and economic effects of Internet technologies and interrelated effects of social and technological networks. In this podcast he discusses social production, open source software, Wikipedia, defaults, Facebook, and more.

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Daniel H. Kahn on social intermediaries, identity, and code-backed norms

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Daniel H. Kahn, a recent Harvard School of Law graduate and clerk on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, discusses social intermediaries and their potential to radically improve the social life of the Web. The discussion also turns to portable identities, code-backed norms, and trolling.

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