“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” That’s probably one of the most chilling lines of any sci-fi AI villain. HAL, the sentient computer that runs the ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey, has decided that humans are superfluous to its mission. That iconic scene has influenced how we think about the role […]
By 2050, 70% of the world’s population is expected to live in cities. This brings up some interesting questions around privacy in public spaces. What happens when, under the guise of public safety, we decide that everyone with a smartphone ought to have their movements monitored? In Russia, you might get away with identifying criminals […]
We recently sent our hardest drinking working MBA to New Zealand to milk an article out of the technological innovations underway in the country’s dairy industry. In that article, we noted how agriculture companies like the Hamilton-based Livestock Improvement Corporation now leverage satellite imagery to assess the amount of grass available to feed New Zealand’s […]
This past summer we sent one of our MBAs up to Alaska to search for the origins of Alaskan Thunderfcuk and to see if any innovation might be happening that far up north. We managed to come across a great story about an Alaskan service provider, Microcom, that’s working with a satellite firm called Astranis, to provide the State’s population with affordable broadband […]
Pundits were recently fawning over the proclamation by 180 companies – including some of our favorite dividend growth investing names like Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), 3M (MMM), and The Coca-Cola Company (KO) – that maximizing shareholder value is no longer the raison d’etre for these companies. This slap in the face of fiduciary responsibility should […]
One important thing you learn during your MBA is that your newly acquired ability to conjure up value from nothing is referred to by the finance community as “the ability to generate alpha.” Loosely speaking, generating alpha means putting money into the markets and getting back more than if you would have simply invested in […]
The year is already off to an exciting start if you’re one of those people whose pulse races a little faster when you hear the “final frontier” intro to any Star Trek episode. SpaceX just completed a successful test of its crewed launch system, “piloted” by a mannequin named Ripley, all but ensuring we’ll be […]
When you work in sales, one of the things you’ll learn is how to handle objections. While we simply see objections as legitimate reasons for why we may not want to buy a product, the salesperson sees objections as hurdles they need to get through before your John Hancock inevitably adorns the contract. Some objections […]
Brunch has become one of those pretentious, First World affectations that make us want to move to a deserted atoll in the Marshall Islands and eat coconut crabs all day. The most offensive part of this trendy ritual is the even trendier avocado toast. It’s an avocado spread on bread that has been toasted. That’s […]
You can be a tech firm with the most innovative product on the planet, but the only way you’re going to sell that product is if people know about it. You can spend loads of money paying some mediocre PR firm to cold-call 1,000 different media outlets with a “pitch” – essentially a request for journalists […]