Peter Vander Auwera - Issue #34

The very best

The industrial approach to leadership places a heavy emphasis on the formulation of intentions and plans and then commun…

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

This report outlines the positive correlation between the work environment and employee engagement around the world. Download to explore key findings and data.

Today’s leaders are experts at yesterday’s leadership. But that’s precisely how we got into this mess.

George Monbiot: The self-serving con of neoliberalism is that it has eroded the human values the market was supposed to emancipate

Bot hype battles bot reality

Data and Society

Virtual reality firm says it isn’t sharing information, such as physical movements of owners, with the social network – yet

I was in elementary school, watching the TV live, when the Challenger exploded. My classmates and I were stunned and con…

Zeitgeist

First there were mobile apps — now bot apps. And this opportunity is bigger and more user friendly than any app platform…

Innovation

"Sometimes shifting your perspective is more powerful than being smart."

Scale now trumps differentiation.

Thanks to the smartphone-addicted consumer, GPS, apps, and the Internet, startups are reinventing a $638 billion industry.

Future of work

This report outlines the positive correlation between the work environment and employee engagement around the world. Download to explore key findings and data.

Internet Culture

Young children can’t consent to having their images and words shared with thousands or more, often in the service of an adult’s personal brand.

FinTech

Stick that in your accelerator program and smoke it.

If Airbnb can figure out a way to make its user profiles immutable and universally readable, they could become a trusted form of digital identity, a bit like the profiles that credit bureaus create for individuals. If these identities can be “exported” to other platforms, as Blecharczyk said, they could become hugely valuable. An Uber driver, for example, might know if his next passenger came with a history of leaving Airbnb properties damaged.

David Brear, Chris Skinner, @LifeSREDA team up to create a new FinTech fund to invest in blockchain

Alibaba Group Holding Limited and Lazada Group S.A. announced today that Alibaba entered into an agreement to acquire a controlling stake in Lazada.

Facebook seems ready to radically reimagine credit cards—minus the “card” part

AI, Robots, Algorythms

Over 60% of the AI companies acquired in the last 3 years had VC backing. There have been 4 major acquisitions already in 2016.

Last week, Microsoft inadvertently revealed the difficulty of creating moral robots. Chatbot Tay, designed to speak like a teenage girl, turned into a Nazi-loving racist after less than 24 hours on Twitter. “Repeat after me, Hitler did nothing wrong,” she said, after interacting with various trolls. “Bush did 9/11 and Hitler would have done a...

Post Capitalism

Financial meltdown, environmental disaster and even the rise of Donald Trump – neoliberalism has played its part in them all. Why has the left failed to come up with an alternative?

You may find it odd for a venture capitalist - a capitalist - to attempt to interpret investing in startups through a Marxist lens. Be that as it may I enjoyed

Art related

Like so many organizations these days, Autodesk is a company in transition. It was until recently a traditional boxed software company selling licenses...

Other

Introducing a month-long series about the future of cities