I remember when the first iphone was released in 2007. I had several friends working at Blackberry at the time and they were dismissive of the iphone as merely a "toy". I always quiped in response "who doesn't love toys?".
Had Blackberry taken the threat of the iphone more seriously, the smartphone market would look very different.
I think it’s way more complex than that. Blackberry made attempts at touch screens but they were all crappy.
Some engineers might have been dismissive, but as a company I think it tried its best to live in the future. It just didn’t have the insight to take the right tradeoffs with the more efficient tech.
Japanese phone makers had the same issue. As early as 2005 some maker tried to have touch screens, some with really innovative interfaces to compensate for the technology, but it stayed niche devices.
I don’t think anyone really dismissed touch interfaces as non threatening. It was just damn hard to have anything that was remotely useful.
I have been using a System 76 Gazelle Pro since 2012 running either Ubuntu or Mint and I love it. They are solid laptops. The help center is very friendly and knowledgeable. I had one problem when I first got my machine and they handled it in about 10 minutes with a link to a new linux kernel.
Recently a plethora of startups working on new nuclear energy technology have been created: Transatomic power, Flibe, Helion and UPower (to name a few). These startups, respectively, have technology based on molten salt reactors (MSR), new fuels (Thorium), or new modalities (small distributed scale and fusion). Most of these startups face a huge challenge (and capital requirement) to go from idea/concept to pilot/demonstration plant. As Chairman of Helion and UPower how do you see these new startups commercializing their technology? Will they require partnerships with existing utilities and what is the expected timeline?
I think they should just try to raise large amounts of money rather than partner with large companies for development. However, they will need to partner with utilities for pilot plants.
I can't speak to the other companies, but my hope is that UPower and Helion have prototypes in ~3-5 years.
Nuclear energy faces a challenging PR environment.
Letting the public perception get so bad should be considered one of the costliest PR mistakes in recent history in terms of human and environmental cost. The problem is highlighted by the fact that many will disagree with this statement.
Very insightful article from Ben. Although the conglomerates are not in vogue at the moment several conglomerates dominate the business world: GE, Siemens, etc... Actually I see a lot of parallels between Googles maturation and say GE's. Both started with a niche product but then diversified into more complex systems as they matured.
