Home Tag "Amazon"

Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America

In his cover jacket intro of Alec MacGillis’ "Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One-Click America," Craigslist founder Craig Newmark refers to the 1937 Upton Sinclair novel, "The Flivver King: A Story of Ford-America." Newmark contrasts the $30 billion market capitalization of Ford with the $1.5 trillion market capitalization of Amazon. In "The Flivver King," Sinclair blasted Ford for underpaying its workers while forcing them to engage in repetitive and dangerous assembly-line work.

Walmart’s Secret Weapon to Fight Off Amazon

The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Nassauer recently wrote about Walmart’s strategy to counter the continuing growth of Amazon, reporting that Walmart CEO Doug McMillon has revealed a change in strategy to compete head-to-head with Amazon. Rather than continue to build a separate ecommerce business or other standalone ventures, he said that the new focus will be on operating a web of businesses through existing Walmart supercenters.

Higher Education in the Digital Age by William Bowen

Bill Bowen is an economist, president emeritus of Princeton University and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as founding chairman of ITHAKA. His most recent book, Higher Education in the Digital Age, received much advanced press so I pre-ordered a copy through Amazon. Stanford University President John Hennessy invited Bowen to deliver the 2012 Tanner Lectures given last October. Higher Education in the Digital Age is a revised publication of the lectures given. The book is organized in a way to explore two current topics in higher education: 1) the cost disease and productivity concept in higher education and 2) whether the deployment of technology and online learning in particular can cure the cost disease. Stanford arranged for formal responses to the lectures with participation by President Hennessy, Andrew Delbanco of Columbia University, Daphne Koller of Stanford University and Coursera, and Howard Gardner of Harvard University. Those responses and Bowen’s comments are included as part of the book.