In many ways, Uber and Airbnb represent a 21st century update of the franchising model. In franchising, the parent company brands and markets the product, sets standards for producing it, and charges a licensing fee and receives a percentage of revenue from each of its franchisees.
The difference is that technology radically lowers the barriers to being a franchisee. In many ways, you can call the modern trend “the franchise of one.” The smallest unit of franchising in the past was a small business, with all the overhead that implies: real estate, equipment, uniforms, employees (including managers), and so on. Today, the franchise can be a single individual, and that individual can work only part time, so it’s really “the franchise of one or even less!”
Branding and advertising are much less necessary because the app itself becomes a customer habit that delivers business. There are little or no capital requirements, workers can schedule their own time, and turn their own under-utilized personal assets (a car, a house, or other equipment) into business assets. In her book Peers Inc, Robin Chase refers to this as “excess capacity.”
Internet era networks don’t just seek to eliminate workers, they seek to augment them. Invest in software that empowers your workers, allowing them to multiply their effectiveness and to create magical new user experiences for customers.
Turkeys, while cycling
Software eats healthcare
Once these communication tools get fully integrated into the health community, my bet is that we’ll initially hear some complaining from the incumbents: most likely, something like ‘my staff had to learn all of these new apps, and it didn’t really improve my clinic at all!’ just like with EHRs in round one. But then, just like before, we’ll see health care providers quietly divest themselves of the low-end jobs that they don’t really want to be doing: getting their patients to eat healthier, exercise more, watch their blood pressure, and seek peer support groups. Those have never been moneymakers anyway, right?
Football Saturday
Scenes from a recent University of Wisconsin football game.
A Glorious Picnic Point Walk
A brief video captured while walking on Madison’s Picnic Point.
Music: Kronos Quartet does Sigur Ros.
My (live, rare) Question for Senator Ron Johnson
UPDATED:
Listen to this event via a mp3 audio file. My question begins at about 30:40 of the 58 minute event.
I often try to attend WisPolitics’ periodic lunches. These events feature members of the political class, including elected officials, candidates, lobbyists and many other parts of the “machine”.
The meetings are a rare opportunity to publicly question our elected officials [3].
And so it was on Friday, that current US Senator Ron Johnson, running for re-election in 2016, participated in a WisPolitics event.
My question:
I am glad that you mentioned liberty and accountability (in your opening remarks).
During the past few years, the CIA has admitted hacking into the Senate computers [1] and the Director of National intelligence acknowledged lying to Congress [2]. Both are felonies. Yet, nothing has been done.
You have voted repeatedly for secret courts and domestic spying. How will our grandkids view these decisions?
Johnson defended his votes (I did not get the sense that he understands these issues in depth – see Barton Gellman at Purdue) and mentioned that he has met with members of the “secret courts”. I responded that the lack of oversight does little for most Americans and that the non secret courts have begun to require warrants for certain government actions.
Suggested Reading:
Eben Moglen on Snowden and the future.
Retroactive immunity for US telecom companies.
Behind the European Privacy Ruling That’s Confounding Silicon Valley.
How is NSA breaking so much crypto?.
Another perspective: The Painful Truth About Snowden – John Schindler.
John Oliver interviews Edward Snowden.
The Secret History of American Surveillance.
Suggested Films:
Citizen Four and the Lives of Others.
Listen to this event via a mp3 audio file. My question begins at about 30:40 of the 58 minute event.
Watch it here.
[1] CIA hacks into Senate computers.
[2] Director of National intelligence acknowledged lying to Congress.
[3] A question free Madison appearance: Russ Feingold and Elizabeth Warren.
[4] The Cap Time’s Jessie Opoien posted a thin event summary.
Ron Johnson’s Campaign Website 2010 campaign website via archive.org My archive. @senronjohnson
Russ Feingold’s Campaign Website. 2002 website and 2010 via archive.org My archive. @russfeingold
China’s Nightmarish Citizen Scores Are a Warning For Americans
China is launching a comprehensive “credit score” system, and the more I learn about it, the more nightmarish it seems. China appears to be leveraging all the tools of the information age—electronic purchasing data, social networks, algorithmic sorting—to construct the ultimate tool of social control. It is, as one commentator put it, “authoritarianism, gamified.” Read this piece for the full flavor—it will make your head spin. If that and the little other reporting I’ve seen is accurate, the basics are this:
This privacy activist has just won an enormous victory against U.S. surveillance. Here’s how.
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman:
The European Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court, has just ruled that the Safe Harbor, an arrangement between the European Union and the United States allowing for the transfer of personal data, is legally invalid. Few non-specialists have heard of the Safe Harbor. Even so, this ruling is going to send shock waves through both Europe and the United States. Here’s how it happened (we talk about the implications in a separate post).
The Safe Harbor is the cornerstone of transatlantic e-commerce
Over the last 15 years, major U.S. e-commerce firms, such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, have developed big markets in Europe. They all rely on an arrangement called “Safe Harbor” to export personal data from Europe to the United States. The Safe Harbor was negotiated between Europe and the United States after a previous transatlantic dispute in which Europe threatened to stop transatlantic data flows. Europe has comprehensive legislation guaranteeing the privacy of E.U. citizens and preventing businesses from using their personal information in various potentially harmful ways. The United States does not have comprehensive privacy legislation (although it does protect the data of U.S. citizens against government intrusions, and provides some protections, e.g. for health data).
The Rise of the Outrageously Long Commute
A few years back, David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue Airways, left his company and launched a new airline in Brazil. The airline, Azul, flies 22 million people a year, employs 12,000 people, and is the fastest-growing carrier in the region.
You’d think running such a large, complex operation would require a move to South America. But Neeleman commutes to Azul’s Sao Paulo headquarters every week from his home in Connecticut, taking the 10-hour redeye on Sunday nights and returning on Thursdays. This way, he says, he doesn’t have to uproot his family of 10 kids.
“My wife wasn’t so interested in moving,” said Neeleman, who recently bought TAP, Portugal’s national airline and is now commuting there as well. “We had all these kids playing [American] football and lacrosse. They don’t have those sports in Brazil.”
A Saturday Stroll in Photos
