Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas

Max Marmer in the HBR blog on why Silicon Valley has "got shallow":

Many venture capitalists are up in the arms because their returns are down, their funds are drying up, and there appear to be a declining number of entrepreneurs pursuing big ideas.

They've turned to blaming angel investors for encouraging "an entire generation of entrepreneurs [to build] dipshit companies and hoping that they sell to Google for $25 million." They say, "this 'think small' attitude is driving entrepreneurs who may otherwise build the next Google or Microsoft to create something much less interesting instead." And this has implications for the whole ecosystem because, "then everyone loses. No IPO. No 20,000 tech jobs. No new buyer out there for the startups that don't quite make it."

Unfortunately, venture capitalists have mixed up their causality. Angel Investors are not the reason more entrepreneurs are thinking small. More entrepreneurs are thinking small, because the costs to starting a company have fallen so dramatically that there is now a whole new class of entrepreneurs creating companies. The founders starting "dipshit companies" are not the same types of founders who would be starting the next billion dollar companies.

These founders don't want to change to world. They just want to make enough money to provide for their family, buy a car, or earn their freedom. These people are the information economy's mom and pop business owners, just more technologically leveraged and profitable than their brick & mortar predecessors. Instead of starting restaurants and hairdressers they build coupon apps that are used by thousands of restaurants and hairdressers.

TED talk by Charles Leadbeater

Charles Leadbeater's TED talk on innovation :

Stanford researchers produce first complete computer model of an organism

From the website CleanTechnica, news of a breakthrough at Stanford:

In a breakthrough effort for computational biology, the world’s first complete computer model of an organism has been completed, Stanford researchers reported last week in the journal Cell. A team led by Markus Covert, assistant professor of bioengineering, used data from more than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world’s smallest free-living bacterium.

By encompassing the entirety of an organism in silico, the paper fulfills a longstanding goal for the field. Not only does the model allow researchers to address questions that aren’t practical to examine otherwise, it represents a stepping-stone toward the use of computer-aided design in bioengineering and medicine.

Gene therapy nears approval in Europe (and office hours)

From the BBC :

Europe is on the cusp of approving a gene therapy for the first time, in what would be a landmark moment for the field. 

Gene therapies alter a patient's DNA to treat inherited diseases passed from parent to child.

The European Medicines Agency has recommended a therapy for a rare genetic disease which leaves people unable to properly digest fats.

The European Commission will now make the final decision.

Update (July 26): Office hours for September will be Monday, September 3, between 7:30 am and 8:15 am. August office hours will be on Monday, August 6, between 7:30 am and 8:15 am as well.

How many computers to identify a cat?

A very interesting article in the New York Times featuring the work of Stanford's Andrew Ng:

Inside Google’s secretive X laboratory, known for inventing self-driving cars and augmented reality glasses, a small group of researchers began working several years ago on a simulation of the human brain.

There Google scientists created one of the largest neural networks for machine learning by connecting 16,000 computer processors, which they turned loose on the Internet to learn on its own.

Presented with 10 million digital images found in YouTube videos, what did Google’s brain do? What millions of humans do with YouTube: looked for cats. 

Computer science tackles a 30 year old economics problem

From MIT news:

In 2007, the University of Chicago's Roger Myerson won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences — in part for research he had published, in 1981, on auction design. Using the tools of game theory, Myerson showed how to structure an auction for a single item such that if all the bidders adopted the bidding strategies in their best interest, the auctioneer would realize the greatest profit.

Myerson's work immediately raised a related question: What's the best way to organize an auction in which bidders are competing for multiple items? That question has stood for 30 years, but MIT computer scientists believe that they have now answered it. In a pair of recent papers, Constantinos Daskalakis, the X-Window Consortium Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, and his students Yang Cai and Matthew Weinberg describe an algorithm for finding an almost-perfect approximation of the optimal design of a multi-item auction. 

How to make a business phone call

I found this guide on making a business phone call on the Internet and think it is a reasonably good reference for office hours calls. Not that any of you folks need it, but I am providing it just in case.

1. Remember that a business telephone call is comprised of three components: the beginning introduction, the middle bulk of the call, and the end summing up.

2. Say everything that you need to in order to explain your reason for calling. State when you will return the call or request that the other person call you back. If you have to leave a message, be concise.