The term disruption is often misused be people talking about new technology products or market opportunities. For many, disruption means any significant new product feature or innovation. There are actually some specific nuances to what disruption really means and how it applies to technology and business. In this post I’m going to explain exactly what [...]
It’s interesting to analyse the moves of the latest crop of Internet giants, because in many ways it feels like these companies are breaking new ground. With each generation, it feels like primarily online based companies are getting stronger and stronger. Whilst Yahoo, eBay, Amazon and Google continue to show strong performance (for the most [...]
An interesting business model that has arisen in the last couple of years is adding a service layer to a traditional industry by augmenting discovery, curation and transactions. The Internet, and in particular smartphone technology, has created opportunities to become an important player in the value chain of slow moving industries. When an industry is [...]
Affiliate marketing is a popular online business model that has the potential to scale quite considerably. The model revolves around third party websites referring traffic to a product or service website. When a customer makes a purchase after using a referral link, the affiliate receives a percentage of the cost of the transaction. There are [...]
A popular online theme and business model from the last 2 or 3 years has been the connection between online and the real world and the augmentation of loyalty schemes and brand awareness. As smartphone adoption rates and time spent on Social Networks increases, loyalty and reward applications seem like such a natural opportunity at [...]
Distribution is a critical ingredient to the success of any physical or online product. It doesn’t matter if you have the best product in the world, if you don’t have excellent distribution no one will know about it. Over the last 5 to 10 years, an interesting new paradigm has arisen on the Internet that [...]
Freemium has become a popular business model for Internet based companies over the last couple of years. A Freemium business model is where a product or service is provided free of charge, with the option of upgrading to a paid for version of the product with extended features or increased usage. Freemium business models are [...]
Betaworks is a hybrid incubator and investment fund that takes fledgling ideas and products and helps them grow into fully mature technology companies. Betaworks are the creators of Bitly, Chartbeat and SocialFlow and are looking to build a collection of companies that all fit into the Betaworks vision of the future of the Internet. The [...]
A common theme from the business owners who contact me for advice is, “How can I fix my current website in order to get results”. Having a website is pretty standard for the majority of companies these days, but a lot of small businesses have websites that are not growing the business or realising the [...]
On Monday I talked about The rise of “Ecommerce 2.0″ and the new wave of Social Commerce that is sweeping the Internet. Social Commerce has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in an industry that was firmly dominated by just a few key players. But Social Commerce can be a difficult thing to [...]
