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What Is The Job Metaverse Is Trying To Do?

The Horizons Tracker

While the metaverse sprang to public attention with the renaming of Facebook earlier this year, the phrase was coined back in 1996 in Neal Stephenson’s book Snow Crash, in which the science fiction author described an immersive version of the internet that was accessed via virtual reality. It’s a market that is already worth $3.1

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When Will this Low-Innovation Internet Era End?

Harvard Business Review

It's an age of unprecedented, staggering technological change. Then there's another view, which I heard from author Neal Stephenson in an MIT lecture hall last week. Stephenson was clearly trying to be provocative. but the emerging markets boom has generally been more about catching up than exploiting cutting-edge technology.).

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Don't Like the Message? Maybe It's the Messenger

Harvard Business Review

It was inspired by comments from author Neal Stephenson, who espoused the latter view in a Q&A at MIT. So I wrote a piece juxtaposing the Stephenson/Cowen view with the work of MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson, who has been amassing evidence that a digitization-fueled economic revolution is in fact beginning to happen. And why not?

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Why Business Leaders Need to Read More Science Fiction

Harvard Business Review

Extrapolating from past trends is useful but limiting in a world of accelerating technological change. Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age inspired Jeff Bezos to create the Kindle ; Sergey Brin mines Stephenson’s even more famous Snow Crash for insights into virtual reality. Science fiction can help.

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Welcome to HBR's Customer Intelligence Insight Center

Harvard Business Review

As early as 1994 Neal Stephenson was envisioning the era of Big Data, and how it might change the work of a market researcher. Fiction writers who specialize in creating dystopian near-futures seem to put a lot of stock in the potential of customer intelligence.

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The Stakeholders You Need to Close a Big Deal

Harvard Business Review

Cool new technology, new market for AT&T, competitive pressure, etc. The decision maker at AT&T was CEO Randall Stephenson. In the end, Pete and OnLive convinced the blockers, including Stephenson’s lieutenants, of the merits of the deal by proving considerable outside third-party support for their vision.

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Talking to Yourself (Out Loud) Can Help You Learn

Harvard Business Review

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says technology workers need to learn online for at least five hours per week to fend off obsolescence. .’” Self-explaining should go into the learning tool kit of workers today, as the economy places new demands on making connections and adopting new insights and skills.