Management and Strategy

Good Article…

A Threat to Startups

Updated August 10, 2010, 12:08 PM

Brad Burnham is a partner at Union Square Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund located in New York City. This was written with Fred Wilson, also a partner at the firm.

We believe that Google and Verizon’s proposed policy principles to preserve an open Internet came out of a good faith effort to bring some clarity to the market for Internet applications and access. But we fear that this agreement is a compromise that does not serve the next great startup enterprise well.

A Threat to Startups – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com

Net neutrality has been topic of discussion especially since news about Google and Verizon deal came out. More info here. I personally think Net neutrality is super important especially for startups. Our economy runs on startup and small businesses and letting Google and Verizon decide whose data is more important on web is just wrong. It means in future Google can pay to push its content for example YouTube and no one else will be able to compete. Will try to consolidate other good articles on the topic on the blog. 

Network neutrality (also net neutrality, Internet neutrality) is a principle proposed for user access networks participating in the Internet that advocates no restrictions by Internet Service Providers and governments on content, sites, platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, and no restrictions on the modes of communication allowed.^[1][2][3]

The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of Internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access, then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the subscribed level of access.

Though the term did not enter popular use until several years later, since the early 2000s advocates of net neutrality and associated rules have raised concerns about the ability of broadband providers to use their last mile infrastructure to block Internet applications and content (e.g., websites, services, protocols), particularly those of competitors. In the US particularly, but elsewhere as well, the possibility of regulations designed to mandate the neutrality of the Internet has been subject to fierce debate.

Neutrality proponents claim that telecom companies seek to impose a tiered service model in order to control the pipeline and thereby remove competition, create artificial scarcity, and oblige subscribers to buy their otherwise uncompetitive services. Many believe net neutrality to be primarily important as a preservation of current freedoms.^[4] Vinton Cerf, considered a "father of the Internet" and co-inventor of the Internet Protocol, Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the Web, and many others have spoken out in favor of network neutrality.

Network neutrality – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch

Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment.

AUGUST 2010 • Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and James Manyika

Source: McKinsey Global Institute

In This Article

• Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream
• Trend 2: Making the network the organization
• Trend 3: Collaboration at scale
• Trend 4: The growing ‘Internet of Things’
• Trend 5: Experimentation and big data
• Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world
• Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service
• Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model
• Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid
• Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid

Two-and-a-half years ago, we described eight technology-enabled business trends that were profoundly reshaping strategy across a wide swath of industries.¹ We showed how the combined effects of emerging Internet technologies, increased computing power, and fast, pervasive digital communications were spawning new ways to manage talent and assets as well as new thinking about organizational structures.

Since then, the technology landscape has continued to evolve rapidly. Facebook, in just over two short years, has quintupled in size to a network that touches more than 500 million users. More than 4 billion people around the world now use cell phones, and for 450 million of those people the Web is a fully mobile experience. The ways information technologies are deployed are changing too, as new developments such as virtualization and cloud computing reallocate technology costs and usage patterns while creating new ways for individuals to consume goods and services and for entrepreneurs and enterprises to dream up viable business models. The dizzying pace of change has affected our original eight trends, which have continued to spread (though often at a more rapid pace than we anticipated), morph in unexpected ways, and grow in number to an even ten.²

Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch – McKinsey Quarterly – High Tech – Strategy & Analysis