Harry Chen Thinks Aloud

Harvard Business Online launched a new web site that is full of useful management and business analysis resources. An official announcement can be found here.

Items on Harvard Business Online that I enjoy:

• HBR IdeaCast: breakthrough ideas and commentary from leading thinkers in business and management
• Innovation & Entrepreneurship: sub-topics includes disruptive innovations, disruptive technologies, entrepreneurship and innovation
  
• Discussion Leaders: blog posts by leading thinkers in business and innovation (Tom Davenport, Tammy Erickson, Eric McNulty, Larry Prusak, Michael Watkins, Bob Sutton and Gillian Corkindale)

Source: Bob Sutton

A stereotypical geek is someone who is fascinated by knowledge and imagination but with uncombed hair and zero social skills. This image is all about to change. Thanks to a new school of hip-hop music called geek rap or geek rhythms.

What’s geek rap? Artists rap about things that matters to geeks, as oppose to women, drugs and gangs. Some artists have the goal to get young hip-hop fans interested in science and engineering. Some others have the goal to change the antisocial image that is typically associated with geeks.

A friend recently sent me a geek rap made by monzy (Dan Maynes-Aminzade), a PhD student at the Stanford University. The song is well produced and the lyrics is very clever. Somehow he and his friends figured out a way to rap with geek words like C++, Red-Black Tree, malloc, kill -9 and dead lock.

monzy is an instant hit on the Web, especially on YouTube. A German Television show even interviewed him. monzy believes that geeks are the new “bling bling” — I agree.

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Technology is cheap. Massive produced technology products are now selling for a dirt cheap price. Lower product price means lower profit margin. In order to survive, companies must try new strategies that will allow them to sell technology with high profit margin.

Philips, the consumer electronics giant, and Swarovski, the cut-crystal company, are teaming up to create “fashionable” technology that could sell for a high profit margin. This new line of products will be branded under the name “Active Crystals”, targeting women age between 20 to 40.

The first two fashion products from the Philips-Swarovski collection are a flash drive and headphones, to be introduced in April. Others will follow this year, executives said without elaborating. De Jong’s unit is responsible for products like remote controls, Web cameras, headphones, batteries, DVDs, CDs and burners, speakers and cables.

The Philips-Swarovski peripherals will carry a modest price premium, executives indicated. The price range over the whole product line will be €40 to €250 , they said. “We didn’t want to price it so that women think it is not for them,” de Jong said.

Source: Geeky gadgets get a shot of high-fashion bling, IHT.

What can we learn from this new business model?

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NeuroSky and Emotiv Systems are two US companies that are working on technologies that will allow gamers to control video game characters by thoughts. Central to these technologies is a technique called EEG.

Controlling things by mere thought is a staple of science fiction. That fiction, though, is often based on a real technique known as electroencephalography (EEG). This works by deploying an array of electrodes over a person’s scalp and recording surface manifestations of the electrical activity going on under his skull.

How exciting! If it works out, it will be another revolution in the video gaming — after Nintendo Wii’s motion-based game controllers. But don’t get too excited, there are many problems need to be solved before we see it in the consumer market.

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You may have heard from economists that the world’s economy is undergoing globalization. Imports and exports are now important part of every major countries’s business. One country’s economy, such as the one in the US, is highly depended on the economy of another (e.g., Middle East countries and China). What you may not aware is that globalization is also hitting the Internet.

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For a long time, researchers have dreamed about pervasive computing — heterogeneous computing devices are seamlessly integrated and can communicate with each other. I think Nintendo is bringing us one step closer to this vision.

Later this year, Nintendo will release games that will utilize Nintendo’s Wi-Fi Connection Play technology. It will enable wireless gaming between its set-top game console Wii and its handheld game console Nintendo DS.

From Nintendo Press Release:

Now for the first time players can compete with one another near and far with Pokémon® Battle Revolution, a game of remarkable firsts:

• the first Wii game to include Nintendo® Wi-Fi Connection play
• the first Pokémon game for Wii
• the first game to link Wii and the hand-held Nintendo DS™
• and the first Wii game that can be controlled using Nintendo DS

When Wii and Nintendo DS are linked, players can use their Nintendo DS units as controllers or import characters from the upcoming Nintendo DS games Pokémon® Diamond Version or Pokémon® Pearl Version.

For additional information, check out this YouTube video. Although I don’t understand 99% of the game talk in the video, but I think it will be a fun game for kids to play. Since play is learning for kids, the sophisticated game design and game play will help to make tech-savvy of kids who are growing up with these technologies.

The world’s history is fascinating. With the Internet and blogs, learning about the past no longer requires sitting through a history class. Here is a fascinating story about two US military officers who entered Tibet in 1942 trying to find ways to send supplies to China.

The history goes like this…

In the early years of World War II, the US wanted to send supplies to the Nationalist China led by Chiang Kai-shek. At that time, China was at war with Japan. The direct route through Burma was blocked by the Japanese, so in 1942, the OSS (the US precursor to the CIA) sent two US officers Tolstoy and Dolan to explore whether or not a supply route can be formed via India (i.e., from India to Tibet, and from Tibet to China).

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Do you ever wonder what other people do to ensure a balanced life style? How about what online business to start with if you’ve limited funds and experience? To get answers to these questions, you can use LinkedIn Answers. It’s an innovative tool that allows people to ask and answer questions in the LinkedIn network.

LinkedIn is a very successful social network tool for the professionals. This Q&A service is bringing online social networking to a new height. The idea behind LinkedIn Answers is very simple. Users post questions to the community under various categories (Technology, Business Operations, Law and Legal etc.). Once questions are posted, any users in the community can submit their answers. On the surface, this mechanism is no different from typical online forums or news groups. However, if we look closer, there is some unique and innovative about this new tool.

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