Infrastructure often lags when an innovation takes off. Markets move over time from being customized to becoming more standardized. Sometimes, for example in the commercial publishing ecology, the process can take decades and progress is gradual. Other times, as we saw in the last financial crisis, change can come frightening fast. In the first instance, … Continue reading
In this month’s issue of the Montague Institute Review, I wrote about Mendeley, a collaboration and personal knowledge management service popular with academics (see A new knowledge platform: SharePoint vs. Mendeley). As someone who thinks for a living, I read with interest the most popular reference in the huge Mendeley archive — an article by … Continue reading
This month marks my twentieth anniversary in business as The Montague Institute. After nearly 40 years in the computer industry, I find myself reflecting on what has changed during that time. New technology gets most of the attention, but I’m more interested in what hasn’t changed, or least what changes much more slowly: 1. Technology … Continue reading
I just finished reading A Beautiful Mind about Nobel prize winning mathematician John Nash — a very sad book. His early, most productive, years were marred by arrogance and social dysfunction. His middle years were consumed by mental illness. Shortly thereafter, I read a profile of Silicon Valley libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel and an article … Continue reading
In spite of the fact that I make a living in the computer field, I’m usually slow to use new technology. I was one of the last to get a microwave. I still prefer my desktop computer to an iPad, and would rather use a map or follow my nose than use a GPS. The … Continue reading
I’ve been working with a crackerjack SharePoint programmer to integrate our Filemaker metadata repository with SharePoint. The objective was to maintain thesaurus terms and relationships in Filemaker (where they’ve lived since 1998) and have those changes automatically made to the corresponding data in the SharePoint term store. There are, of course, several good programs on … Continue reading
Originally publishing January 2006 Article in focus: “Companies look for ideas in all the wrong places” (Eric von Hippel, CIO Insight, June 5 2005). More articles on this topic: See innovation, personal fabrication, and usability and user behavior in the Digest index or the Montague Institute Review index. About the author. Eric von Hippel is … Continue reading
Originally published on October 2010 After spending a year compiling my SharePoint notes and slides into a book, I’m dismayed to learn that my efforts may be irrelevant. That’s the implication of a special issue of the Atlantic magazine devoted to “brave thinkers” — people who think out of the box and have the courage … Continue reading
