Business Lessons from sucessful entrepreneurs and business leaders: LunchLearning.com

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 21 minutes 50 seconds

Many people view innovation as a cumulative process, more evolutionary than anything. Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and known for coining the term “net neutrality”, speaks at The Institute of International and European Affairs and explores a radically different perspective. Rather than viewing innovation and develop as the process where things continually grow and change gradually over time, Wu proposes that innovation occurs on a cyclical system that is dependent upon revolutionary developments.

The vast majority of innovation consists of incremental improvements on a given platform. However, these changes are minor and are merely refinements or additions upon the existing structure. As a platform matures, innovation slows down as the market is saturated and the low hanging fruit has all been claimed. A revolution reveals entirely new avenues of potential and, as a result, spurs innovation and new developments rapidly. This cycle is present everywhere, ranging from product development and personal growth to infrastructure and business.

It is absolutely vital to manage both the evolution within each cycle as well as the revolutions. Ignoring one results in stagnancy. While development isn’t absolutely necessary, it does limit the viable lifespan of anything that is restricted. The cycle of each revolution has its ups and downs as well, something that Wu is careful to note. Just as the Internet is currently growing, it is absolute folly to think that the Internet, as its perceived today, is the final, penultimate standard. It, like television and radio, CDs and cassettes, will undergo an eventual decline.

As you watch this video, consider the influence of cycles in your life, both personal and professional, and how things are transformed as a result. They are not inherently good or bad, but merely different and a prepared individual can anticipate and prepare for the changes they bring.

Thanks for joining LunchLearning.com today! Enjoy your Lunch!

Reading time: 3 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 35 minutes 25 seconds

Marissa Mayer (@MarissaMayer on Twitter) is the Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google. She has become a much recognized face of Google, often seen in interviews and speeches discussing Google’s current goals and achievements. In this speech given at Google Press Day in Paris, Mayer goes into detail about Google’s past, present, and future goals as a company.

Mayer begins the lecture with a quick introduction to the components of the search experience, which are specifically: comprehensiveness, relevance, speed, and user experience. Mayer stresses how Google has focused on each component to fine tune the overall search experience. When she describes the early days of Google, she marvels at how much Google and the internet have grown. When search first began, people were ready to sort through many websites to find the information they needed, but Google put its focus on relevance, aiming to place the best results first. This made Google extremely popular, just through people spreading the word, without any real advertisements.

Mayer explains how as information has increased rapidly on the web, it has become even more necessary to use search, and things like relevance and ranking become extremely important. She talks about how much information seeking has changed since search and the internet were introduced. At one point, we would have gone to the library, or asked other people when information was needed. Now, Google can answer a question in under a second. And despite using a lot of new features and capabilities, Google has remained clean and simple. Mayer describes many of these current capabilities in detail, for example things like spell correction, alternate queries, and sitelinks, all help make search more efficient and effective.

So, what will the future look like at Google? Google is working on answering questions even faster, according to Mayer, their goal is the speed of light. Of course, there are also numerous new features that Google is trying out. Developments in cross-language search which uses translation to search multiple languages, or universal search which offers up multiple types of links like images and videos that are all the most relevant to your search. One very interesting new capability is personalization, which takes a person’s search history and uses it to make search more relevant to the individual. The last ten minutes of the video includes a question and answer portion, which focuses on Google’s new developments.

It’s incredibly exciting to see what Google is coming up with to broaden and sharpen our search experience! So, enjoy this intriguing video about the future of search, and of course, Happy Learning!

Reading time: 2 - 4 minutes

Video Time: 19 minutes 30 seconds

Well this is it for me, its been great sharing with you this week. I want to end my series with a look towards the FUTURE. In today’s video Jane McGonigal (@avantgame on Twitter), and a researcher at the Institute for the Future, talks about how the social aspects of online gaming can be transposed onto the real world. She believes that the social networks in online games which allow players to effectively communicate to one another will eventually become the foundation for how we will use technology in the future. As an example Jane’s social game World Without Oil shows how people can effectively create multiple solutions to a large problem in a short period of time. Her game also demonstrates how people can use new technology to creatively solve problems when given the right means to achieve a goal.

New technology helps create better products and helps small businesses advertise in inexpensive ways. Technology like Google, Facebook and Twitter give entrepreneurs the resources to target specific consumers and streamline marketing. What might sound silly now, like making the real world mirror video games, might be as normal as checking an e-mail in the future. Technology and business go hand and hand and the partnership between these two economic giants help drive change. I picked this video to remind you that technology is your friend so play nice. I hope you enjoy it!

Happy Learning and Game On!