Business

(Opinions expressed here are my understanding of Vivek Wadhwa’s opinion) “The next Trillion Dollar Opportunities” (in this decade) China’s manufacturing and India’s call center business are saturated. The PC industry is dead, Laptop is flat, and mobile is going up. Next trillion-dollar opportunities Proactive health care Preventive care is much cheaper. Expect sensors everywhere (in the toothbrush, toilet, mirror, etc.) to give info based on spotted symptoms. IBM Watson is being trained on medical data. Soon, nanobots will go inside the body for drug release/monitoring. Manufacturing Robotics taking over ( Baxter - 22K robot - will cost 1-2 $ per hour of work after that). Manufacturing coming back to the USA. America is being automated. 3D Printing Current 3D printers 200 (low end) -1500$ (high end). Expect prices.to go down to 200$ for high-end in 5 years => household goods can be printed at home. Finance Square-like mobile payments exploding Bitcoin carries a negative image, expect government-backed digital currency soon. mPaisa in Kenya - 60% of transactions via sms now (25% of Kenya’s GDP). Transportation Robotic drones going to take over for deliveries Self-driving cars are imminent. Computing Big data Internet-enabled devices augmented by high-speed internet (Google Fiber) New UIs - touch-based interfaces, augmented reality (Google Glass) Synthetic Biology We are taking exponential (and not linear) steps in technology and humans are not good at predicting the impact of exponential changes. ...

The book talks about a set of habits which differentiates successful people from the normal. It criticizes [recently popular] personality ethic which it terms as deceptive and manipulative and calls for character ethic which is a fundamental change in human character. This change must begin from inside and spreads out [inside-out] and the reverse is not possible.

The book compares a set of 17 companies that are considered visionary with similar 17 companies of lesser stature. I am avoiding gory details of their methodology here. To derive theory from practice, the book aims at debunking common myths about visionary companies.

Zynga’s market valuation has surpassed EA Sports market evaluation. Even though EA Sports is trying hands in social and acquired Playfish, their main source of revenue is still video games. Though the current user base of EA Sports (35 million) does not look impressive compared to Zynga’s (258 million) but a viral game from Playfish can always turn the table.