Author: Jeffrey Funk | Page 3

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Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
Date
October 25, 2021

Categorized
Economics

Tagged
capitalism, creative destruction}

Destructing the Creative Destruction Myth

_{Debunking the argument that the Fortune 100 list is evidence of the productive vitality of capitalism} _{Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
October 25, 2021

6

Economics}

Joseph Schumpeter argued that capitalist economies are not stagnant and calcified but, instead, by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1950 He believed that embedded in capitalism is an engine of change that revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to live in. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, 1950 Schumpeter was no doubt influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin had written that the “extinction of old forms is the almost Read More ›

Restaurant automation service concept. Robot waiter serving a tray with a bottles and wine glass. Two wheels robotic character on yellow wall, gray floor background. copy space

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post

Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
Date
May 26, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence

Tagged
Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Google, Google Translate, Robots, self-driving cars, Unemployment}

A World Without Work? Don’t Hold Your Breath

_{Predictions of mass unemployment caused by robots continue to be wildly inaccurate} _{Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
May 26, 2021

9

Artificial Intelligence}

Will we soon be sitting on couches watching reality TV shows while robots work 24/7 doing all of the work humans used to do? The idea that robots will replace most human labor has been around for almost 100 years and has become more popular with each new advance, from sensors and microprocessors to enterprise software, data analytics, and AI. The latest wave of robot hysteria was tweaked by The Singularity is Near in 2005, emboldened by Race Against the Machine in 2012, and sent over the top by The Second Machine Age and The Rise of Robots in 2016, and A World Without Work in 2020, all best sellers. A World Without Work was shortlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey 2020 Business Book of the Year, in addition Read More ›

Two HR specialists man and woman analyzing the market of alumni to boost the intern program at international consulting company. Hiring new talented officers. Social media hologram icons.

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post

George Bara and Jeffrey Funk
Date
April 19, 2021

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work

Tagged
Featured}

AI’s Future: Combining RPA With AI to Augment Knowledge Workers

_{The work machines can’t do is usually the rewarding part, both personally and financially} _{George Bara and Jeffrey Funk
April 19, 2021

6

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Work}

Counterterrorism requires analysts to work through millions of Twitter and Facebook messages, YouTube videos, and websites in multiple languages, far too much work for humans. But a combination of AI (artificial intelligence) and RPA (robotic process automation) can help humans do this work, leaving humans in charge of the most complex and important decisions. AI systems can crawl through documents in any language, automatically translating them, extracting names of people and organizations, and doing sentiment analysis of conversations to identify key text to be considered later by humans. This text can be automatically organized into proper bins using RPA, enabling a data processing and analytics pipeline that can handle large amounts of content at speeds never possible in the past. Read More ›

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post

Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
Date
March 22, 2021

Categorized
Business and Finance

Tagged
Innovation, Invention, Productivity}

Why We Need to Stop Relying On Patents to Measure Innovation

_{The key to a nation's long-run economic growth is the effect of innovation on productivity, and has little to do with patent activity} _{Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk
March 22, 2021

8

Business and Finance}

Patent databases may be a smoke screen that hides the true issues, problems, and dynamics of innovation behind the illusion that innovation is booming—and that patent activity measures the boom. We are said to live in a time of remarkable innovation, with the computer/information revolution often compared to the Industrial Revolution in allowing people to produce more while working less. Economists, consultants, and other business gurus are striving mightily to quantify this revolution and to understand its sources and implications. One popular metric is the number of new patents issued each year. For example, the pace of innovation might be gauged by the fact that there were 669,434 US patent applications and 390,499 new patents awarded in 2019, each triple the Read More ›

driver uber car in black car in the street of new york

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post

Jeffrey Funk
Date
June 2, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Global Technology

Tagged
Featured, Regulation, Silicon Valley, startups, Uber}

Why Are There No New Googles and Amazons?

_{The internet has matured, making many new internet-based companies comparatively low-tech} _{Jeffrey Funk
June 2, 2020

5

Business and Finance, Global Technology}

Today’s startups have targeted a much different set of technologies than did startups in past decades.

Cute pair of sitting French Bulldog dogs dressed up with unicorn costume headbands with flowers

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post

Jeffrey Funk
Date
June 1, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance

Tagged
Airbnb, Featured, IPOs, Unicorns, Zoom}

Why Do Today’s Tech Startups Disappoint Investors?

_{Only 14 of the 45 recent Unicorns showed increases larger than those of the Nasdaq generally} _{Jeffrey Funk
June 1, 2020

7

Business and Finance}

Companies we hear a lot about, like Zoom and Beyond Meat, are not profitable compared to an earlier generation of tech startups.

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post

Jeffrey Funk
Date
May 27, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance

Tagged
Featured, IPOs, Unicorns, Venture capital}

Where Have All the Profitable Startups Gone?

_{We must distinguish between COVID-19's devastating impact and pre-existing problems that it is making worse} _{Jeffrey Funk
May 27, 2020

7

Business and Finance}

The most successful startups of today aren’t as profitable as those founded 20 to 50 years ago. Something is terribly wrong with the current startup system.

^{Type
post

Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith
Date
March 3, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
___longform, AI bubble, Dot-com bubble, Featured}

Stanford’s AI Index Report: How Much Is BS?

_{Some measurements of AI’s economic impact sound like the metrics that fueled the dot-com bubble} _{Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith
March 3, 2020

9

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

Stanford University’s AI index offers us fanciful measures of the triumph of AI, rivaling the far-fetched metrics of dot-com commerce. The reality has been the opposite. For decades, U.S. productivity grew by about 3% a year. Then, after 1970, it slowed to 1.5% a year, then 1%, now about 0.5%. Perhaps we are spending too much time on our smartphones.