When Business Models Fail, Hit the Startup Casino

September 13, 2017

I read “Searching for the Next Facebook or Google: Bloomberg Helps Launch Tech Incubator.” On the surface, the write up is not too newsy. Bloomberg (the terminal folks that Thomson Reuters has not been able to kill off with hundreds of millions in cash pumped into its “innovation” efforts) is getting into the startup casino. The idea is that Bloomberg (the former mayor) is bringing incubators to New York City. The hook for the story is that Cornell University is the big fish which has been landed on Roosevelt Island, the one with the tram thing. With Bloomberg beaching Cornell and Technion (the MIT of Israel) ensnared, I have some questions floating in my rural Kentucky mind:

  1. When an innovation occurs, who will get access to that technology? The universities, the professors, the students, or Bloomberg?
  2. What will Thomson Reuters do to counter this play by the inventor of the famed and incredibly cluttered terminal for MBA clutching Red Bulls and mocha lattes?
  3. Who will be able to hire the bright sprouts who flock via tram to Roosevelt Island?
  4. Has IBM’s MIT play been “trumped” (no pun intended) because Bloomberg can play most of the numbers on the startup casino’s roulette wheel?
  5. Will Facebook and Google just buy Stanford University and leave the old school companies to the backwaters on the East coast?
  6. Which big company will fund the High Technology High School in New Jersey? (Strike that. New Jersey?)

Worth watching?

Stephen E Arnold, September 13, 2017

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