All posts filed under: The Daily

Embarrassing AI mistakes could knock out top executive

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SvD Näringsliv / The Daily

It is one of the world’s largest and most influential tech companies. Despite this, Google’s AI launches are marked by embarrassing mistakes. Now questions are being raised if it’s time for its leader to step down. Fire. Described by many as the most important discovery in history. It’s easy to understand the surprise of legendary journalist Kara Swisher. The year is 2018 and Swisher is interviewing Google CEO Sundar Pichai on stage. “We don’t take […]

If even Linkedin can’t function in China, who can?

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The Daily

This column was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on October 15th, 2021. There was only one realistic way into China as a foreign company. Now even that seems to be closed. When Linkedin dismantles its social network in the country, it could mark a new era for tech companies in China. An established truth is that the only way to enter China as a foreign company is through partnerships. The local legislation and relations […]

New phenomenon turns players into investors

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The Daily

This column was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on October 11th, 2021. – When I started, I played almost four to five hours a day, says John Ramos, a 22-year-old man from the Philippines. It sounds like a quote you’ve heard many times before from someone caught up in a gaming addiction. But this is something else, and it ends in a different way than they usually do. Ramos has made gaming into a […]

Closing Discobelle.net

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The Daily

About eleven years ago, a few friends of mine and I started a music blog called Discobelle.net. It was a spin-off from what was originally a house music club, a radio show, and then eventually a Swedish house music blog. The .net-version was in English, and thus had the possibility of reaching a bigger audience. And it did. In fact, it was a part of launching a whole genre of electronic dance music. This was […]

Writing for SvD Näringsliv

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The Daily

I’m happy to announce that starting today I will be a contributing tech analyst to Svenska Dagbladet, a Swedish daily newspaper. Their business section, Näringsliv, is going through a transformation where they focus more on companies that you use, rather than own or work for. This is a change that I wanted to contribute to. Business journalism is ripe for a new take. I have previously been a contributing analyst to SVT, Swedish National Television, […]

My new areas of interest

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The Daily

You get known for what you have done; rarely for what you would like to do. This is a problem because it captures people in an incorrect assumption: that they would like to do – and would be best at – continuing to do exactly what they did before. This is often wrong. Expertise and capability is in the eye of the beholder, so this is a tricky thing to adjust. But many years ago […]

Designing with asymmetry: Enabling people to share an experience in different ways

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The Daily

Letting everyone have the same experience sounds good and fair. In reality, this way of designing excludes people that are different, or have different circumstances. Allowing experiences to be asymmetric can be a way of sharing without having to be identical. When I worked in media research many years ago, a common consumer question was “What kind of TV do you watch?“. The answer was almost always “documentaries“. You could then place an ethnographer in […]

Next stop: Malmö, Sweden

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The Daily

In the spring of 2012, I moved to San Francisco to start the US office for Toca Boca. My wife, Miriam, followed shortly thereafter and we sent ten boxes of stuff with UPS. We didn’t know how long we would stay and took one year at a time. A few weeks ago, I moved back to Sweden. To Malmö, next to Copenhagen, more specifically. A little more than eight years after I left. This time […]

Joining the board of Rovio

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The Daily

A few weeks ago I was elected to join the board of Rovio, the gaming and entertainment company most known for Angry Birds. I am an independent board member in the company that is listed on the NASDAQ Helsinki stock exchange ($ROVIO). Rovio is a company I have followed and admired for many years. They were pioneers in building the first global family brand through mobile. In later years, they have gone through a big […]

The double edged sword of success: Understanding Naspers and their Tencent investment

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The Daily

“The investment strategy at the time was to find a replacement revenue source for its traditional print media business – which it forecast would decline in the advent of digital media” That’s a quote from an article describing Naspers, a South African media company, in the 1980s. Koos Bekker – now the Chairman – had suggested that there was potential for a new type of pay TV in South Africa, similar to HBO. The narrative […]