Monday was triumph, followed by terror. I ran the Boston Marathon in 2:54, a personal best. I hobbled back to my hotel to the news that there were two explosions at the finish line, just over an hour after I crossed it. In that moment you fear the worst. Over...

The war for talent at tech companies is alive and well. Look no further than the most recent acqui-hire in which Yahoo's Marissa Mayer spent $30 million to get top talent. Major acquisitions aside, startups are often blind to the actual costs associated with full-time employees. As you...

Starting a company in a developing country is difficult. Two of the biggest challenges are navigating the government bureaucracy and building a business without proper technical infrastructure. When we started TaskUs I was shocked by how businesses in the Philippines handled payroll. In the U.S. we got an account with...

At my company, TaskUs, our entire business is being the remotely located extension of other growing businesses. Without the seeds of globalization -- namely, reliable high-speed fiber optic Internet -- our firm would not exist. But beneath this reality, is a more fundamental truth. Our success as a business, like...

There is a quintessential publicity shot. You have seen it a hundred times before. The latest "it" company is standing on a balcony, overlooking a sea of applauding stockbrokers, reporters and other NYSE staff. Having just rung the infamous opening or closing bell, top company brass grin as they realize...

The bookends of our years allow us moments of consideration. The year in our rearview may have brought us pride or anguish, but it was likely filled with the unforeseen. Our lives and our world are so dynamic, the infinite possibilities so volatile, that our track record of prediction is...

The tech industry has redefined the motivating factors for acquisitions with the advent of the "acqui-hire." However, there is a new trend emerging and it aligns perfectly with the current focus on innovation. In an attempt to achieve true innovation, Internet tech companies are shifting from traditional motivations for acquiring...

E-Commerce and the Dawn of Retail Innovation

Succeeding in business is just as much about what you know as it is about defining and planning around what you don't. Plato said it best when he declared, "I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is...

Heads or tails? There's something refreshing about that question. It's simple. Two possible choices. Unfortunately, most decisions are not that easy to make. We are fortunate and unfortunate to live in an era where we are confronted with not one, or two, but nearly infinite options.

This plethora of...

As companies have decentralized strategic and innovation activities, promoting agility, they have become increasingly hospitable to catalysts -- these mission-driven leaders who corral corporate resources that are outside their traditional span of control to address sprawling challenges. They form networks or coalitions within and outside the company and are motivated...

The tech industry is characterized by brutal competition. Ongoing patent wars, massive company acquisitions, aggressive marketing strategies, all of these in an effort to get the bigger slice of the marketplace. One recent casualty in this race for supremacy is Hewlett-Packard. Unable to keep up with the "tablet effect," HP...

It's high season for back-to-school, meaning parents and students are running around, perusing the web, and cutting coupons to try to save some extra cash. The hot-button item this year has been e-books, and how digital textbooks save cash and lighten loads. But are e-textbooks really the answer to education...

Augmented reality is seen by many as the new frontier of environmental interaction. Last year, 302 million smartphones were shipped worldwide, estimated to hit the one billion mark by 2016. Add to that the growing popularity of tablets, and that's a serious amount of computing power being lugged...

Over the past decade, the internet has rendered printed newspapers, photo albums and CDs useful as little more than coffee mug coasters. All the while, the television has remained a staple of our daily lives. The average American still loafs on their couches for three hours a day gazing into...

This year the average college student will spend well over $1,000 on textbooks. A staggering sum, especially when added to the rapidly rising cost of tuition. The eTextbook has long been heralded as the answer to textbook costs. But as college kids head back to campus this fall, the vast...

With the imminent launch of Google Me it's clear that the search giant is doubling down on its social media efforts. It began in February when Google paid $50 million to acquire the social answers site Aardvark. In the subsequent months the company has invested approximately $150 million in Zynga,...