“Google’s threat to withdraw its search engine from Australia is chilling to anyone who cares about democracy.”

So led Peter Lewis in the Guardian last week, in reference to Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code.

For those who haven’t been following along, the Australian Government has proposed new legislation that is in effect targeting two companies — Facebook and Google — and making them negotiate to pay for every link out to an Australian media company. …

“Look, Clayton, I’m a busy man and I don’t have time to read drivel from academics but someone you told me you had this theory… and I’m wondering if you could come out to present what you’re learning to me and my staff and tell us how it applies to Intel.”

So begins the story that Clay Christensen would love to tell about how Andy Grove of Intel famously came to be a convert to the theory of disruption. …

Most know Professor Christensen for his business academic work — in particular, his ground-breaking work on the theory of disruptive innovation. Getting to be his student, and the co-author of How Will You Measure Your Life?, I had the privilege of getting to know another side of him: a deeply principled man, committed to his religion, and to the people in his life. While many people view professional, personal, and spiritual as distinct parts of life, Clay was the same person in each. It was just the way his mind worked.

The following excerpt reflects that beautifully — how he…

The Qualtrics acquisition by SAP represents the third largest sale of any SaaS company in history. One of the largest players in enterprise software just purchased a company in a space — Customer Experience Management (CEM) — that you’ve probably never heard of.

But despite you haven’t heard of it, this deal actually has the opportunity to fundamentally alter the way that organizations get managed. ERP systems have traditionally focused on sensing data inside an organization — inventory, processes, financials. Customer Experience Management (CEM) systems shift that focus from the inside, to the outside.

Back to the customer.

Imagine, if…

The New Yorker’s profile on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook was fascinating reading — if you missed the last few years on Facebook, it’s an excellent place to see it all in one spot.

But, for a variety reasons, there was one theme that stood out: Zuckerberg’s apparent obsession with Augustus.

Augustus (born Octavius) is among the most storied of Roman Emperors. He defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra in the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, becoming princips, or first citizen. No doubt his military acumen was high — he expanded the Roman empire dramatically, adding to it Egypt, northern Spain…

2013 saw one of the world’s most publicized data breaches. A Target employee inadvertently clicked on a phishing email; soon after, the personal details of over a third of all American adults were released into the wild — to be used in ways that were certainly never intended when those adults gave the data to Target.

Target got slammed for it. People stopped shopping there that Christmas. Their stock price tanked. Their CEO got fired.

As bad as this was, it is absolutely child’s play compared to the racket that Facebook was running at exactly the same time.

There’s a…

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes,

“What the hell is water?”

This opening to David Foster Wallace’s famous commencement speech is coming to my mind more and more often these days. …

“It is often assumed that an economy of private enterprise has an automatic bias toward innovation, but this is not so. It has a bias only toward profit.” — Eric Hobsbawm

The first time I arrived in the United States as more than a tourist was in September 2008, to begin graduate school. It was a fateful time to land in the country: within weeks, the US financial system began to melt down.

In seeking to understand quite how this had happened, a term began to be used that I wasn’t very familiar with.

Moral hazard: In economics, moral hazard…