Recent content on Robert Vesco
Decades ago strategy scholars began exploring the boundaries of the firm. 1 The broad idea was that if we could identify what was truly essential to the firm, we could outsource the rest. So for example, most firms no longer have their own cleaning staff; instead they outsource to companies that specialize in cleaning. It makes perfect sense. But there are many other areas that aren't as…
Toby Ord writes a book that any human who cares about the future should read. The Precipice is about all the things that could end humanity for good. And if you thought we only needed to worry about climate change and nuclear war, you were wrong.
Most books on productivity focus on prioritization from the perspective of work. Sometimes they mention life issues, but it’s usually not the focus. As a result, I think too many of us overvalue work and undervalue the things that truly matter in life. Prioritization between work and life requires asking different questions and layering life before work.
I read a piece on linkedin from an entrepreneur who is encouraging his employees to use AI to put themselves out of a job. In theory an employee who follows that advice will then have the ability to move on to more interesting jobs and challenges. Even if his intentions were good, I’m sure what many of his staff were actually hearing was “you should train your replacement before we…
Thanks for visiting my website. The purpose of this site is to share my ideas around philosophy, technology, teaching and writing. At the moment I’m writing a book around sustainable happiness or what we must do to maximize happiness across generations. I’m particularly concerned about the current trajectory of society and so I spend a lot time thinking about happiness, economics,…
The internet is destroying our civilization. And AI, with its ability to create fake content and exploit human weakness at scale, will only accelerate the the problem. However, there is an opportunity to turn this around if we use the motivation to get online to our advantage. In fact, harnessing this motivation has the capacity to do more for humanity than most schools. But first we need to treat…
tl;dr: If you want an editor that works with R, python, SAS, Stata, SQL and almost any other data science language. If you want an editor with IDE-like features. If you want an editor that works on any platform and as well as on the terminal. If you’re a fan of literate programming. If you want an editor that is highly customizable and will be around after most editors have come and gone,…
Teece’s 1986 piece on profiting from innovation makes the following claim: The trend in international business towards what Miles and Snow call “dynamic networks” – characterized by vertical disintegration and contracting – ought thus be viewed with concern. (Business Week, March 3, 1986, has referred to the same phenomenon as the Hollow Corporation.) “Dynamic…
So there has been a lot talk about how the media hype machine is setting entrepreneurs up for failure. That is, it’s encouraging folks who may not be serious to try their hand at starting a business when they probably shouldn’t. Below are some charts on the relationship between media, legitimacy and entrepreneurship that attempt to understand media’s impact.
In preparation for a workshop at this year’s Academy of Management conference my colleague Tim Hannigan and I gathered data on all the sessions and workshops. We then processed them using R’s topic models package to extract “themes” from the abstracts.The purpose was to identify what the divisions at Academy were discussing and to look at the overlap between them. The image below is one result…