This post is not really about politics. Sure the presidential campaign continues marching towards an exciting conclusion. Sure a sudden bevy of vocal, cynical, and amateurish political observers and bloggers are loudly decrying the two presidential candidates as basically undifferentiated “clowns.” There are major differences between the two parties and the two candidates – would we really be so divided as a nation and would our political debates be as heated if they are essentially the same? Please people, let’s be respectful of our diverse …

A while ago, I wrote about patent trolls and wondered about the viability of intellectual property, in the form of patents, as a liquid, tradeable, securitized asset class. I also mentioned Nathan Myhrvold’s Intellectual Ventures as one outfit that could drive patents toward an elevated asset class status. In a recent TechCrunch post about Myhrvold, it appears he’s gone a long way in pushing patents to become more liquid and tradeable. In summary, Intellectual Ventures has systematically acquired a patent portfolio of over 20,000 patents. In the eight years since …

A few months ago I came across a piece by Jeff Nolan, titled Incrementalism and “The New New Thing,” which struck poignantly at a raw nerve. He called attention to the incrementalism gripping Silicon Valley despite the flush amount of capital available for startups. Much of the attention and hype has surrounded social networking and Web 2.0 startups but each new entry is a slight improvement over the previous. But only discontinuous, quantum leap innovations create disproportionate value. So what’s next?
Umair Haque’s An Open Challenge to Silicon Valley put it …