Raj

The Business of Wall Street

I have plenty of thoughts on the financial crisis that happened in 2008, from regulators falling asleep at the wheel, bankers doing what they do best and exploiting a market with no regard for the consequences, and people thinking they can spend when they really did not have the money.

That being said, Mark Cuban’s recent post about Wall Street’s goals is spot on. While I think he is a bit optimistic in that I feel we are somewhat beyond the point of reigning in the bulls, I do believe it’s something we need to be discussing on a national stage in the country.

Sadly I don’t feel many people outside of the industry really understand the implications and basic foundation of high frequency trading platforms, so I am not sure how fruitful that national conversation will be without it becoming overly political. Still, better to have the conversation than not. It’s time we took a good hard look at what the market should do for the country.

Raj

The New Industrial Revolution & The Maker Movement

I know a lot has been written lately about the rise of crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter and the like, which is why I enjoyed Chris Anderson’s article on this new era of manufacturing. He touches on some major points, most notably that yes, while we are mainly an economy that relies on high end services, manufacturing is still the base that needs to be present in order to make sure everything hums along properly. Most people in the country cannot become consultants or bankers or doctors or lawyers, yet they still need fulfilling jobs and people still need/want things.

The Maker Movement takes manufacturing and makes it widely and broadly accessible for anyone to create and make goods with minimal (relatively speaking to the past) cost, something that will need to happen if we want to ensure a strong manufacturing base in the future. We all know that small businesses are the ones that keep the economy moving along, and I think the Maker Movement can become a tremendous opportunity for a lot of people. I still believe they are people in older manufacturing jobs that could benefit from this new access to capital, ideas and markets, who would better serve the economy by switching into this new market of making things at scale with minimal cost up front.

As long as we continue to invest in programs and services that help would be entrepreneurs grow and learn from each other (think local events like Meetups, online resources like Google’s new Entrepreneur center, other online web resources and the myriad SaaS services out there now to manage a business, etc.) we will start to see more and more innovation continue to happen at the lightning fast pace we have been accustomed to in the Internet era. And that is definitely a cause for celebration in a weak economy.

Raj

Weekly Reading Roundup for August 19th, 2012

A collection of articles and posts over the past week that I have read and would like to share.

Raj

Corporate Success & Change

The HBR ran this post on how companies need to manage change by capitalizing on it so as to build their next money making business. It’s an interesting argument in that it internalizes change as a driver for growth within a company, disallowing the company from effectively sitting on it’s laurels and not innovating within a constantly changing marketing. I tend to agree with everything written in the article except for the part where they say continue to win with the shell/original business. Having two concurrent businesses running at the same time can be done, and has definitely been done in the past (just think about multi-national conglomerates). It’s clearly a winning strategy as diversification of corporate revenue is always a good thing.

However, I do think it can be difficult to keep motivated in the original business when all resources from a corporate standpoint are looking to the “next big thing” at the company: people within your own organization will see you are basically building Noah’s Ark for when the floods come to destroy your existing company, but the new company will continue to float on, thereby completing the cycle. Nevertheless, companies need to manage employee expectations and also the timing of their jump into the next business, both of which are understandably easier said than done.

Raj

Weekly Reading Roundup

Below is a collection of various articles and posts across the web that I have been reading or are currently reading.

Raj

Weekly Reading Roundup

A collection of articles and posts that I have been reading over the past week.

And at the moment, I figured I would post the song that I am listening to while writing this post:

None other than The Allman Brothers band Live from the Fillmore East in ’71. Love this track.

Raj

Weekly Reading Roundup

A weekly post on what I have read/am currently reading.