Category: 1.1 Industry (General)

  • The Impact of Germany’s Stop of Uber

    A German court ordered Uber to stop offering its taxi services (for now). The argument was as to be expected: Uber taxi drivers and cars are not fit for the job. This is definitely the right decision under the assumption that the German taxi approval rules make sense. Even if the court decision stands, this…

  • The Smartphone Market Upset

    Slide 10 (below) of Mary Meeker’s 2014 Code presentation shows that it took only eight years for U.S. corporations to almost completely take over the smartphone (operating systems) market. The label “made in the U.S.A.” is misleading, as open source powers most of this software. However, this slide shows who is in control, and open…

  • This Curious Word 3D Printing

    When I first heard about 3D printing, I thought it was a weird choice of words. It is a good word, because it tells a story familiar to people living today, but why not call it home manufacturing or on-site factories, or the like? I’m not sufficiently knowledgable about the history of technology, but is…

  • The Business of Open Models

    I’m at beautiful Schloss Dagstuhl once again this week, for a seminar on “Open Models as a Foundation of Future Enterprise Systems”. I was asked to spin some thoughts on what the Open Models Initiative could learn from open source. The result is a short but sweet presentation on “the business of open models”. My…

  • Definition of Disruptive Technology

    A technology is disruptive, if it allows new companies to shake up an established market and win against established large companies. I got asked three times this week what “disruptive” means so here is my definition 🙂

  • Cloud Computing is not a Business Model

    I’m at the Dagstuhl Seminar “Information Management in the Cloud” where I keynoted about cloud computing businesses models. Given that I’m hardly a cloud computing expert this may seem like a stretch, however, the organizers had asked me to talk about my open source experience and relate this to cloud computing. This perspective turned out…