How to Generate Money

Chris Andersson, of The Long Tail fame, points to an analysis about how web 2.0 businesses actually make money. The biggest revenue seems to be online advertizing. I would have though biggest source of income is Venture Capital investments.

The original analysis (by Box UK) is both interesting and useful. It shows what has been tried, what is being used, what are related possibilities. For start-ups it can help to (re)define what is their market and business model. Usually one model is not enough, so it's useful to see options where to target next growth sprint.

Analysis is based on data from Webware's "Top 100 web apps for 2008". This gives an enourmous amount of credibility to the analysis. You can see several well know companies, who are actually using these models: Amazon, Google, iPhone, Opera, eBay, !Yahoo, Skype, Twitter, Wikipedia, Facebook, bitTorrent, YouTube.

Some are more successful than others. Something to seriously think about.

Does Innovation and number of Patents correlate?

McKinsey blog What Matters has an article "Building an innovation nation", which they summarized as a graph showing how innovation and US patents are directly related.

The article itself is well-thought, balanced and logical, but the graph gets all attention. One picture is worth ten thousand words.

Is number of patents really the most important evaluation criteria? Do you really measure world-wide innovation with number of patents in USA? Not in the world, but in USA? Only?

The article says USA is slipping in innovation, because many Asian people either return home or don't come at all. Japan and Europe are getting old. New innovations comes from emerging areas, which just might not register patents in USA. India and China we already know, look out for Africa.

Working at home: Work or Home?

I've met many people who say they want to work at home. The first silent question in my mind is: do you want to work or do you want to stay at home?

Those few, who actually have worked at home, have some common advices. Make it serious, either by ritual (walk around the house before and afterwards, setup your gear, change clothes) and/or create a special place dedicated for work. Yes, you can work in the corner of your bedroom, but then it has to be more than "just a corner".

Lifehacker tells about Mitch Haile, who is very serious. He's definitely working at home, check his FAQ! Contains much more than just a detailed description of his office, how did he built it and what's in there.

I've done both, stayed at home and worked at home. Some rituals, some special arrangements - and lots of peaceful night time without interruptions.