This is my last post here. It was so enjoyable.
I am old enough to give my uni software plus in younger hands - Michael Aichinger - and I am young enough to launch a new business: EXNeR Advice. I will continue writing about computational maths there.
Exploit the wu-wei paradox
I am still passionate about transforming future technologies into margins. I plan to work less, and do more - hoping the wu-wei principle will help me: let the complex stream work for me.
When you start your own business, it's just you and your ideas. Then you get clients and they start shaping you and that ideas …. When I decided for Wolfram technologies - and his was very early - things changed. There was already a complex flow.
A language to program everything
The most exciting thing to me as former algebraist, former factory automator (maker of domain-specific programing systems for complex manufacturing plants): Wolfram Language - the language to program everything. It's amazing.
What always struck me when developing technology businesses - and still does:
The fear of regret
When I made my first tumbling steps into computing, in the mid 70s, nearly everybody agreed: "No one ever has got fired for buying IBM". A wonderful example of understanding "defensive decision making". This is not in search of the optimal risk ... it is loss aversion. Choose those, being good in not being bad?!
The eager sellers and stony buyers trap
Innovations fail because clients irrationally overvalue what hey use and makers irrationally overvalue what they offer. The irrationality factor can go up to 10.
Market efficiency hypothesis is a myth
Markets seem to be adaptive, but do we really have an idea why business works as it does?
We know from financial markets that the market efficiency hypothesis is not true. If it was, it was predictable. It is, partially, but only on the long run (often mean reverting). Rational buyers would ask for ugly cars.
Big data is a big joke
The major concern is not about the access to such data and how to slice and dice them, but the nature of the problem. It is all about high-dimension-low-number-of-samples and that in those sets large deviations are more attributable to noise than to insight. Life in the market data salt mines is hard. But media, analysts, clients will read the results as given …
The trust vs attention dance
Both are scarce elements in our businesses. Trust is fragile and attention is limited. If clients want constant attention to trust us, we might become a problem. And in fact we find trusted brands that are not at top of an attention list. A misunderstood brand promise can kill businesses.
There are tactics to avoid falling into his kind of traps. One, I use, might be seen as arrogant: No, UnRisk is not for "You"
I hope, we stay in touch.
Picture from sehfelder
