Newco Shift | Covering the biggest shift in business and society since the industrial revolution

Free The Data, Start a Business, Save Main Street…and Change the World!

GmercyTavern — Gramercy Tavern in New York City

How a fictional “Token Act” might change the game in small business across our economy.

If Walmart can leverage data tokens to lure Amazon’s best customers away, what else is possible in a world of enabled by my fictional Token Act?

Well, Walmart vs. Amazon is all about big business – a platform giant (Amazon) disrupting an OldBigCo (Walmart and its kin). Over the past two decades, Amazon bumped Walmart out of the race to a trillion-dollar market cap, and the OldCo from Bentonville had to reset and play the role of the upstart. The Token Act levels the playing field, forcing both to win where it really matters: In service to the customer.

But while BigCos are sexy and well known, it’s the small and medium-sized business ecosystem that determines whether or not we have an economy of mass flourishing. So let’s explore the Token Act from the point of view of a small business startup, in this case, a new neighborhood restaurant. I briefly touched upon this idea in my set up post, Don’t Break Up The Tech Oligarchs. Force Them To Share Instead. (If you haven’t already, you might want to read that post before this one, as I lay out the framework in which this scenario would play out.) What I envision below assumes the Token Act has passed, and we’re at least a year or two into its adoption by most major data players. Here we go…

The Accountable Capitalism Act Will Never Happen. But Now the Conversation Will.

By John Battelle

Elizabeth_Warren_CFPB — Senator Elizabeth Warren

(Cross posted from Searchblog)

The past week or so has seen a surge in commentary on the role of corporations in society, a theme familiar to readers of this site. While it might be convenient to peg the trend to Senator Elizabeth Warren’s newly minted Accountable Capitalism Act (more on that in a second), I think it’s more likely that – finally – our collective will is turning to our most logical and obvious instrument of social change, namely, the instrument of business.

We humans like to organize ourselves into social units. They range from the informal (pickup basketball games) to the elaborately structured (Senate hearings). Our ability to harness collective will is unsurpassed in the animal kingdom, it’s one of our key evolutionary adaptations, driving the success of our species across the globe.

The Resurgence of Corporate Venture Capital

By azeem

Is the current penchant for CVC just the usual part of the cycle?

I spent a fascinating couple of days at James Mawson’s Global Corporate Venture Capital conference in London this week. Venture capital of all hues is booming. I wrote about it in this week’s issue of my newsletter Exponential View. You can read my thoughts below. For more, subscribe to Exponential View, it’s free and you’ll find it useful.

Last year, $163bn was invested into founders globally, compared to a $25–56bn range in the 10-year period to 2013. Corporate venture capital (CVC), whereby large firms invest in interesting startups, is on an upswing. CVC, traditionally a second-tier option for enterpreneurs, now represents about 18% of all venture deals globally and about a third of all dollars invested in venture. CVC of 2017 is bigger than the entire VC industry of 2013.How do you make sense of it?

The Path to the Artisan Economy

By azeem

The value of human imperfection, plus the power of new technologies are inspiring a return of the artisan economy

Last year, I gave a presentation on the rising importance of artisanship in a world of perfect machines, and followed it with an article about the one thing computers will never beat us at. I wrote:

In the world of the future, automated perfection is going to be common. Machines will bake perfect cakes, perfectly schedule appointments and keep an eye on your house. What is going to be scarce is human imperfection.

We are still early in the early days of these developments, but we’re already seeing an uptake in artisanship. As Economist’s Ryan Avent writes, the trend offers clues about the future economy:

Craft is, in general, far less well-paid than professional work. Yet the benefits it offers — the satisfaction of controlling one’s own destiny, acquiring a range of skills, creating beautiful and delicious things, forming friendships with suppliers and customers — make up for the reduced incomes and ensure that there is a small, steady migration of professionals into the craft economy.

Noah Smith depicts craft brewing as one path forward for the middle class, that could serve as a model for other industries:

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18 Predictions for 2018

By azeem

18 areas to watch attentively in the new year

Last week I wrote about the books that helped me make sense of 2017.

This is the first year I am presenting predictions for the coming year. I’ve received some incredibly helpful comments from readers via Twitter. This has encouraged me to stick my head above the parapet.

All You Need to Know About China: Party Congress, Surveillance, and Becoming the Intelligent…

By azeem

I often mention China in my weekly newsletter about exponential technologies and society, but I’ve been acutely aware that this can barely do it justice. I’ve asked my friend, David Schlesinger, to shine a light on the Middle Kingdom during these times of change.

David and I first worked together at Reuters over a decade ago, at which point he had spent more than 20 years working in the region. David went on to become editor-in-chief of Reuters, the world’s top newswire, before taking up a post as Chairman of Reuters in China. Now based in London, he runs Tripod Advisors, which helps companies understand the region. He also has an Emmy Award, which I think is quite cool.

How Schwab Does Innovation: Focus On the Client, Not the ROI

By newco

NewCo Shift Forum

The largest public investment platform decided to build its technology in house. It actually worked out.

Neesha Hathi is EVP, Investor Services Strategy, Segments and Platforms, at Charles Schwab. That’s a long title for a short job description: Haathi runs Schwab’s platform, the technology millions use to manage their investing experience. In this talk from earlier this year at Shift Forum, Haathi explains how Schwab thinks about innovation. The answers may surprise you.

Neesha Hathi: I’m really excited to come and share a little bit about what we’ve been doing at Schwab. I’ve been in the Bay area since 2000 or so.

The Economist Who Hated Democracy

By scott-rosenberg

The NewCo Daily: Today’s Top Stories

James McGill Buchanan may be the most influential conservative economic thinker you’ve never heard of. His belief that liberty (in the free-markets sense) was incompatible with democracy (in the people-power sense) has shaped the conservative movement from the Goldwater era to the present, according to a new book by Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains (Alex Shephard in The New Republic).

MacLean traces the roots of Buchanan’s thinking to the dawn of the school voucher movement in the fallout of the Brown v. Board of Education decision that barred segregated schools. In his lifetime, Buchanan, who died four years ago, was often overshadowed by Milton Friedman, who became the celebrity market-promoting economist.

Why the Trump Bump Hasn’t Become a Slump

By scott-rosenberg

The NewCo Daily: Today’s Top Stories

U.S. stock markets have boomed since Donald Trump’s unexpected victory last November. The conventional explanation is that investors got excited by the twin prospect of business tax cuts, which seemed inevitable given Republican domination of the federal government, and of huge infrastructure spending programs that Trump promised. (If you’re doing the math, you can see that investors did not worry about the government taxing less while spending more. Deficits? What deficits?)

By now, however, it should be clear to everyone that virtually none of the GOP program is going to get enacted any time soon, if ever, given the dysfunction in Washington and the Trump administration’s limp grasp on the levers of power. Yet the markets remain ebullient. What’s up with that?

At Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, Every Day is Day One

By scott-rosenberg

The NewCo Daily: Today’s Top Stories

Amazon’s 20-year story of innovation and customer-oriented growth has had its ups (like a focus on long-term planning over short-term results that has paid off for investors) and downs (like reports of a brutal culture that chews employees up). Jeff Bezos offers a fascinating glimpse of the thinking and mindset behind the company’s ascent in his annual letter to shareholders, which Recode reprinted last week.

Bezos’s mantra: Hold onto “day 1” as long as possible. Fight the idea that “day 2” has arrived. “Day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1.”