Every company wants to be innovative, but how do you balance the risk of innovation with the need to keep the lights on? Listen to this interview with Kapil Kane, Head of Innovation at Intel China, to find out.
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Design is often at the core for why products go viral or flop. But, how can you tell good design from bad right at the start? How do you hire the right people and avoid costly mistakes?
That’s what you’ll learn on this episode.
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You've probably heard about network effects, but they aren't the only thing you need. Learning effects build the ultimate moat against your competition.
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How do you get to the top of a tech company as a non-technical professional? How can you drive innovation, when you’re not building the technology yourself?
That’s what you’ll learn from this interview with David Wells, ex CFO of Netflix and chair of the board at Wise.
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On Airbnb, people stay at strangers' homes. On Twitter, people get trolled. Both are global tech platforms, but why do people treat strangers well on one, and badly on the other?
The answer lies in platform governance: the rules you make to encourage good interactions and punish the bad stuff. Learn how to set up platforms where people are nice to strangers with this week's podcast episode.
Learning notes from this episode.
How do you launch a dating app, if you have no men and no women on it? Or, how do you launch a market place with niether buyers nor sellers?
This is the chicken and egg problem that all platforms have to solve to succeed.
In this week's episode, you'll learn 6 methods for how to launch a platform when you have no users. Some are sneaky, some are fun and all are very clever.
Sophia's favourite book on how to build & grow platforms is Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy - And How to Make Them Work for You.
1. Pipeline to Platform conversion, e.g. Amazon to Amazon marketplace
2. Using a company that has the user base you want, e.g. Airbnb & Craigslist
3. Seeding content, e.g. dating apps & Quora
4. Bringing influencers to your platform for an incentive, e.g. Joe Rogan
5. Producer Evangelism: e.g. Kickstarter, Indigogo, Partyslate
Listen to Sophia's interview with Partyslate CEO & Co-Founder Julie...
Facebook disrupted the media market forever. The Apple App Store created the app economy, valued at $6.3 trillion today. What makes platforms like these SO successful?
In this episode, you will learn the core concepts behind platform businesses, so you can identify platforms in the making or build them yourself.
This is the beginning of a mini-series on platform fundamentals at Tech for Non-Techies.
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Does having $2 billion in the bank account and celebrity backing guarantee success for a consumer app? Not necessarily.
Listen to how one company burned through almost $2 billion and had to shut down their app after just 6 months. Learn what Quibi did wrong, so you can avoid their mistakes.
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Join the Tech for...
Developers don't work in the same ways as non-technical professionals. If you don't know how to work with developers, you can waste thousands of dollars and get very frustrated, as you'll see from the story Sophia shares on this week's episode.
Learning notes from this episode:
Success in tech consists of two parts: making great products and using them to build a business. No matter how brilliant an app or algorithm is, if people do not want to pay for it, it is unlikely to live for long.
This is why all tech innovators need to learn the core skills of commercialising innovation.
Listen to this episode to learn how Salesforce, Starbucks and Xero commercialise their tech products, and so you can apply their lessons too.
The top 3 questions you need to answer to ensure your tech product has business success are:
Always focus on the benefits that the product will bring customers, not its features.
Tell Sophia what you’re working on and submit your questions to her on [email protected]
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