Newsletter
🟢 9 Strategic insights for 2025 - 8. The battle for the rails
Europe spent ten to fifteen years dreaming of startups while the next battle for tech supremacy was already waged elsewhere, on the new "rails" and critical infrastructure.
Philippe MEDA
Since 2007, Philippe has collaborated with hundreds of startups and advised numerous multinational corporations on disruptive innovation strategies. He also teaches MBA courses in Europe and Shanghai.
Hot Takes
Can Tesla deliver robotaxis? They'll have to answer these 15 questions first
A few days ago, Elon Musk showed off his promised robotaxi, the Cybercab. The Tesla Cybercab is a cool-looking prototype that needed to be much more than thatThe same, tired promises.The Verge This Cybercab might never get to the streets–or at least not without solving half a dozen
Weak Signals
Will AI win the Nobel for the U.S. from now on?
Back in September 2022, I was reporting on digital and AI: (...) this Friday, I'd suggest we get some fresh air and a dose of solid optimism about what digital can achieve. How? Remembering that artificial intelligence cracked one of the most complex problems of modern biology this year:
Hot Takes
Tampa, a canary in the coal mine for innovating urbanism
Tampa Bay is becoming a canary in the coal mine for the escalating climate crisis. For over a century, it has largely avoided Florida's most destructive hurricanes, but that might end with Hurricane Milton, which threatens a storm surge of up to 4.5 meters. The region’s
Newsletter
🟢 9 Strategic insights for 2025 - 7. The slow incumbents' extinction
The core insight A wave of extinction seems to be hitting many of the industry leaders of the last decades. This is not a random event. The underlying forces of the market are changing irrevocably, and just like Intel or Boeing, anyone can be the next Kodak. The discussion We&
Toolbox
My BIG Technology Framework - Free template
As I'm working with a few teams and MBA students with My Big Technology Framework (a thorough technical assessment of what level of maturity and business impact any given technology has), I decided to share the Mural template I use to collaborate with them. It's a
Newsletter
🟢 9 Strategic insights for 2025 - 6. Innovation centers are (mostly) done
The innovation lab seemed to be a great idea years ago. Intrapreneurs, infusing new energy in the system with startup-like energy and all that jazz. The most prominent labs are now all closed, mostly silently and without much to show for. The bean bags and pong table are in a closet. What now?
Culture
What is a future-driven corporate culture?
Understanding what is a corporate culture in a way that is both clear and practical is not an easy task. When describing what is a future-driven culture, there's probably not much that can top Steve Jobs in 1983: Apple strategy is really simple. What we want to do
Hot Takes
Meta’s Orion is another nail in the coffin for mass-market AR/VR (for now)
A year ago, pretty much date to date, I was asking "the only question about virtual reality," which at the time was how long it would take to get AR/VR/XR glasses that don't look like a space helmet. Yesterday, Meta started to disclose an
Hot Takes
Star Wars has been shot on an iPhone (close enough)
In 2007, I discussed how human brains can't compute Moore's law and, in general, any exponential change. Moore's law, being famous since the late 70s for describing how computing power doubles roughly every year and a half for the same cost, has been one
AI
State of AI with Google Notebook: will we escape the big enshittification?
I am not very much sharing all the AI tools I've been testing these last months, nor the ones I currently use. That being said, I found the latest Google tool, Notebook, quite illustrative of the current state of AI. Notebook is designed as a sort of mood
Toolbox
Are you working on 80%-OK or 99%-OK problems?
Another concept I’ve been mulling over this summer is the distinction innovators face between problems that can afford to be mostly solved (80%-OK) before delivering their core value and those that demand near perfection (99%-OK). Take self-driving cars, for instance. Back in 2018, I predicted they’d