Of Latitudes and Attidudes

The rationale behind the rapid rise of Machine Learning can be summarized in a simple analogy. Imagine you have just invented the Wheel. At first, the idea was to have a rolling mechanism to take your boulder from one place to another (lever!). Then, you realized you could put two of these things together and make a cart. Much farther downstream, came the use of potter's wheel, roller skates and a million uses in-between. Likewise, Machine Learning started off as an esoteric way for academicians to find meaningful patterns in scientific data. But soon, it turned into ML for housing, for language, for breaking down every problem into one that can be (if not now, then soon enough) solved by a computer - you just had to provide sufficient input data to 'train' the models. Like the now ubiquitous wheel before it, Machine Learning is all things to every thing. That's remarkable but also significantly broad that no one would complain about the lack of ambiguity. I am workin...

During the summer of 2012, I had written several pieces on corporate strategy as briefs. Putting these up for public consumption & review. I hope to do a lot more of these in the coming months with financial analysis (proof of pudding and all that...) Intel - ASML investment Epilog: TSMC recently sold its stake, netting a cool $660M in the process. Ratio analysis will show an improved financial leverage (FLEV) for TSMC.) Roku Brief Future of traditional Broadcast networks Brief on NBC

I often come across discussions on tech topics spanning finance, strategy, and more lately, Design . Yes, that D-word. My first understanding of design, surprisingly, came from a Microsoft example. Before you wince, consider how Outlook started off as being so different from the rest of Microsoft products. All the data simply resided in the program, having created its own ecosystem of files/folders without the user having to save to the underlying operating system. I was reminded of this intentional design choice today while thinking about the philosophy of the WhatsApp founders. Jan Kaum blogged about his intention to not sell ads on the platform, asking a simple question: "Have you considered the alternative?" A staggering 70% of WhatsApps 450M users (100M in the last 4 months) use the application daily. Imagine the impact of a single design decision that sets your firm apart from a plethora of others offering similar services, in a sea of apps that drown any new come...

There will be a lot written about the Comcast - TimeWarner Cable merger . For those who are interested, read the excellent WSJ piece Value chain of the media-telecom industry: Does the merger give Comcast better market power? A $45B bet.

The Mid-Program Academic Retreat ( MPAR ) held annually by Haas for their MBA students was eye-opening in terms of the quality of presentations. A group of over 240 EWMBAs and a smattering of full-time students gathered in the picturesque Silvarado Resort in Napa. The concept was brilliant and simple. It starts with the Haas curriculum that focuses strong on BILD . This flagship curriculum gives students the necessary tools to be innovative leaders in the outside world. When I was an exec MBA student there, this program was not a focus of our curriculum but I chose it as an elective and it turned into one of the most exciting and pragmatic classes I had taken at Haas. My own journey continued beyond the MBA but I loved the opportunities to support the school. At Napa, the students were put in teams of 5-6 to work on developing products that emphasize growth opportunities not for one but two sponsors. These sponsors were: SAP, Citi, Ford, Kaiser, Panasonic, Verizon, and Nike. Each sp...

Science continues to blow the mind. According to a new theory, every black hole contains a smaller alternate universe. Instead of forming singularities, matter inside black holes pops out into a different universe through wormholes. That's cool, you say. But this is the kicker: Our universe might just exist inside another, much larger universe. How? Short answer: Gamma rays. "These high energy bursts occur at the fringes of the known universe. They appear to be associated with supernovae, or star explosions, in faraway galaxies, but their exact sources are a mystery." According to a publication in Physics Letter B, Indiana professor, Poplawski proposes that the bursts may be discharges of matter from alternate universes. The matter, he says, might be escaping into our universe through supermassive black holes—wormholes—at the hearts of those galaxies, though it's not clear how that would be possible. According to the article, it seems that we can probably test this th...