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Internet of Things (IoT)
A vision where low-cost sensors, processors, and communication are embedded into a wide array of products and our environment, allowing a vast network to collect data, analyze input, and automatically coordinate collective action.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX, Sarbox)
U.S. legislation enacted in the wake of the accounting scandals of the early 2000s. The act raises executive and board responsibility and ties criminal penalties to certain accounting and financial violations. Although often criticized, SOX is also seen as raising stakes for mismanagement and misdeeds related to a firm's accounting practices.
IPO
The first time a firm makes shares available via a public stock exchange, also known as "going public."
distribution channels
The path through which products or services get to customers.
private
As in "to go private" or "take a firm private." Buying up a publicly traded firm's shares. Usually done when a firm has suffered financially and when a turnaround strategy will first yield losses that would further erode share price. Firms (often called private equity, buyout, LBO, or leveraged buyout firms) that take another company private hope to improve results so that the company can be sold to another firm or they can reissue shares on public markets.
information asymmetry
A decision situation where one party has more or better information than its counterparty
viral marketing
Leveraging consumers to promote a product or service.
switching cost
The cost a consumer incurs when moving from one product to another. It can involve actual money spent (e.g., buying a new product) as well as investments in time, any data loss, and so forth
APIs
Programming hooks, or guidelines, published by firms that tell other programs how to get a service to perform a task such as send or receive data. For example, Amazon provides these to let developers write their own applications and websites that can send the firm orders
economies of scale
When costs can be spread across increasing units of production or in serving multiple customers. Businesses that have favorable ____ (like many Internet firms) are sometimes referred to as being highly scalable.
inventory turns
Sometimes referred to as inventory turnover, stock turns, or stock turnover. It is the number of times inventory is sold or used during a given period. A higher figure means that a firm is selling products quickly.
fast follower problem
Exists when savvy rivals watch a pioneer's efforts, learn from their successes and missteps, then enter the market quickly with a comparable or superior product at a lower cost before the first mover can dominate.
brand
The symbolic embodiment of all the information connected with a product or service.
augmented-reality
A technology that superimposes content, such as images and animation, on top of real-world images.
dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM)
A technology that increases the transmission capacity (and hence speed) of fiber-optic cable. Transmissions using fiber are accomplished by transmitting light inside "glass" cables. The light inside fiber is split into different wavelengths in a way similar to how a prism splits light into different colors.
Porter's five forces
Also known as Industry and Competitive Analysis. A framework considering the interplay between (1) the intensity of rivalry among existing competitors, (2) the threat of new entrants, (3) the threat of substitute goods or services, (4) the bargaining power of buyers, and (5) the bargaining power of suppliers.
straddling
Attempts to occupy more than one position, while failing to match the benefits of a more efficient, singularly focused rival.
commodity
A basic good that can be interchanged with nearly identical offerings by others—think milk, coal, orange juice, or to a lesser extent, Windows PCs and Android phones. The more commoditized an offering, the greater the likelihood that competition will be based on price.
sustainable competitive advantage
Financial performance that consistently outperforms industry averages.
price transparency
The degree to which complete information is available
Non-Practicing Entities
Commonly known as patent trolls, these firms make money by acquiring and asserting patents, rather than bringing products and services to market.
network effects
Also known as Metcalfe's Law, or network externalities. When the value of a product or service increases as its number of users expands.
PDAs
Personal digital assistants, an early name for handheld mobile computing devices
logistics
\n Coordinating and enabling the flow of goods, people, information, and other resources among locations.
value chain
The set of activities through which a product or service is created and delivered to customers.
point-of-sale (POS) system
Transaction processing systems that capture customer purchases. Cash registers and store checkout systems are examples. These systems are critical for capturing sales data and are usually linked to inventory systems to subtract out any sold items.
greige
Goods to be further customized based on designer/manager collaboration
RFID
Small chip-based tags that wirelessly emit a unique identifying code for the item that they are attached to. Think of these systems as a next-generation bar code.
vertical integration
When a single firm owns several layers in its value chain
showrooming
The concept where customers browse at physical retailers, but purchase products from lower-cost online rivals.
information system (IS)
An integrated solution that combines five components: hardware, software, data, procedures, and the people who interact with and are impacted by the system.
volatile memory
Storage (such as RAM chips) that is wiped clean when power is cut off from a device.
flash memory
Nonvolatile, chip-based storage, often used in mobile phones, cameras, and MP3 players. Sometimes called flash RAM, this memory is slower than conventional RAM, but holds its charge even when the power goes out.
grid computing
A type of computing that uses special software to enable several computers to work together on a common problem, as if they were a massively parallel supercomputer.
cluster computing
Connecting server computers via software and networking so that their resources can be used to collectively solve computing tasks.
software as a service (SaaS)
A form of cloud computing where a firm subscribes to a third-party software and receives a service that is delivered online.
microcontrollers
Special-purpose computing devices that don't have an operating system and can't do as much as general purpose computers or smartphones. Most _____ contain a processor, memory and input/output (I/O) peripherals on a single chip.
server farm
A massive network of computer servers running software to coordinate their collective use. These provide the infrastructure backbone to SaaS and hardware cloud efforts, as well as many large-scale Internet services.
latency
A term often used in computing that refers to delay, especially when discussing networking and data transfer speeds. Low-latency systems are faster systems.
fabs
Semiconductor fabrication facilities; the multibillion-dollar plants used to manufacture semiconductors.
supercomputers
Computers that are among the fastest of any in the world at the time of their introduction.
semiconductor
A substance such as silicon dioxide used inside most computer chips that is capable of enabling as well as inhibiting the flow of electricity. From a managerial perspective, when someone refers to semiconductors, they are talking about computer chips, and the semiconductor industry is the chip business.
microprocessor
The part of the computer that executes the instructions of a computer program.
random-access memory (RAM)
The fast, chip-based volatile storage in a computing device.
Moore's Law
Chip performance per dollar doubles every eighteen months.
massively parallel
Computers designed with many microprocessors that work together, simultaneously, to solve problems.
multicore microprocessors
Microprocessors with two or more (typically lower power) calculating processor cores on the same piece of silicon.
optical fiber line
A high-speed glass or plastic-lined networking cable used in telecommunications.
HPC
A term for massively parallel computers specifically designed to deliver significantly more calculating power than conventional off-the-shelf computing technologies. The term is often used interchangeably with supercomputing.
nonvolatile memory
Storage that retains data even when powered down (such as flash memory, hard disc, or DVD storage).
price elasticity
The rate at which the demand for a product or service fluctuates with price change. Goods and services that are highly ____ (e.g., most consumer electronics) see demand spike as prices drop, whereas goods and services that are less _ ar less responsive to price change (think heart surgery).
e-waste
Discarded, often obsolete technology; also known as electronic waste.
solid state electronics
Semiconductor-based devices. These often suffer fewer failures and require less energy than mechanical counterparts because they have no moving parts. RAM, flash memory, and microprocessors are these. Hard drives are not.
cloud computing
Replacing computing resources—either an organization's or individual's hardware or software—with services provided over the Internet.
KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
Measurable values defined by a firm to demonstrate progress toward a given goal. Examples are quite broad and could include customer acquisition, cost reduction, or improvement in the ROI of online ad campaigns.
blockchain
A distributed and decentralized ledger that records and verifies transactions and ownership, making it difficult to tamper with or shut down.
bitcoin
An open source, decentralized payment system (sometimes controversially referred to as a digital, virtual, or cryptocurrency) that operates in a peer-to-peer environment, without bank or central authority.
cryptocurrencies
A digital asset where a secure form of mathematics (cryptography) is used to handle transactions, control the creation of additional units, and verify the transfer of assets. These usually take advantage of a technology known as a blockchain.
virtual machine
A software-based representation of a physical computer, complete with operating system and any attendant software that are part of the model being instantiated. You can use a this like a physical machine, and install software, create files, etc. They can also be subject to viruses, security vulnerabilities, and other weaknesses of physical computing, although a cloud computing provider can take some measures to prevent attacks and provide backup and redundancy.
bursting
Shifting capacity to a cloud provider during periods of high demand. A firm that can take advantage of this to scale its information systems should never see its resources overtaxed since it can always rely on its partner to pick up any slack, as needed.
liquidity problems
Problems that arise when organizations cannot easily convert assets to cash. Cash is considered the most liquid asset—that is, the most widely accepted with a value understood by all.
operating income
Income you generate through your operations. Sales through daily business operations minus related expenses. Net income is overall "profit" but can include things such as income from investments, expenses related to financing costs or taxes, or one-time income or expenses such as a gain from a sales or a corporate fine.
white label
A fully supported product or service that's made by one company but sold by another.
fulfillment costs
Include receiving and packaging costs, in addition to shipping costs
deep learning
A type of machine learning that uses multiple layers of interconnections among data to identify patterns and improve predicted results. This most often uses a set of techniques known as neural networks and is popularly applied in tasks like speech recognition, image recognition, and computer vision.
instance
A software-based copy using a pre-defined model of the object being created. For example, an ____ of a Windows computer creates a virtual software representation that works and acts exactly like the computer hardware and software it is modeled after.
channel conflict
Exists when a firm's potential partners see that firm as a threat. This threat could come because it offers competing products or services via alternative channels or because the firm works closely with especially threatening competitors.
account payable
Money owed for products and services purchased on credit
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
U.S. law protecting copyrighted works from unauthorized digital distribution
data warehouse
A set of databases designed to support decision-making in an organization
A/B test
A randomized group of experiments used to collect data and compare performance among two options studied
cookie
A line of identifying text, assigned and retrieved by a given Web server and stored by your browser.
hybrid clouds
Cloud computing architectures that combine on-premises infrastructure with public cloud services, such as those provided by AWS or Microsoft Azure. These might "turn on" public cloud resources as needed, if an organization's existing infrastructure can't meet surging demand.
flash sales
Offering deep discounts of a limited quantity of inventory. These often run for a fixed period or until inventory is completely depleted. Players include Gilt Groupe and Amazon's Zulily in fashion, and One Kings Lane in home décor.
noSQL
A term used for non-tabular databases that are structured differently than relational tables.
goodwill
An accounting term for an intangible asset above and beyond the operations value of the firm. This can include the perceived value of the company's brand name, customer base, and loyalty, positive employee relations, as well as proprietary technology and patents.
technology stack
All of the technology products and services used to build and run one single information technology solution.
fork
In software development (sometimes also called project fork). When developers start with a copy of a project's program source code, but modify it, creating a distinct and separate product from the original base.
SQL
Structured Query Language—the industry-standard language used to create and manipulate databases.
thin devices
These have very little computing power in the device itself, and instead perform the bulk of computing and storage over the network, "in the cloud." The term is also sometimes used to describe applications that run in a browser, but where most of the computing happens remotely.
IRL
In Real Life—online acronym for interactions outside of pre-produced videos, podcasts, etc.
cross-side exchange benefit
When an increase in the number of users on one side of the market (console owners, for example) creates a rise in the other side (software developers).
oligopoly
A market dominated by a small number of powerful sellers
complementary benefits
Products or services that add additional value to the primary product or service that makes up a network.
platforms
Products and services that allow for the development and integration of software products and other complementary goods, effectively creating an ecosystem of value-added offerings.
Daily active users (DAU)
This refers to the number of unique visitors, on average, who use a product or service.
total cost of ownership
An economic measure of the full cost of owning a product (typically computing hardware and/or software). includes direct costs such as purchase price, plus indirect costs such as training, support, and maintenance.
technological leapfrogging
Competing by offering a new technology that is so superior to existing offerings that the value overcomes the total resistance that older technologies might enjoy via exchange, switching cost, and complementary benefits.
social proof
The positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something.
blue ocean strategy
An approach where firms seek to create and compete in uncontested market spaces, rather than competing in spaces and ways that have attracted many similar rivals.
envelopment
When one market attempts to conquer a new market by making it a subset, component, or feature of its primary offering.
congestion effects
When increasing numbers of users lower the value of a product or service.
adaptor
A product that allows a firm to tap into the complementary products, data, or user base of another product or service.
one-sided market
A market that derives most of its value from a single class of users (e.g., instant messaging).
convergence
When two or more markets, once considered distinctly separate, begin to offer features and capabilities. As an example: The markets for mobile phones and media players have converted (and smartphones won).
same-side exchange benefits
Benefits derived by interaction among members of a single class of participant (e.g., the exchange value when increasing numbers of IM users gain the ability to message each other).
two-sided market
Network market that comprises two distinct categories of participant, both of which are needed to deliver value for the network to work (e.g., video game console owners and developers of video games).
customer acquisition costs
The amount of money a firm spends to convince a customer to buy (or in the case of free products, try or use) a product or service.
monopoly
A market where there are many buyers but only one dominant seller.
The Osborne Effect
When a firm preannounces a forthcoming product or service and experiences a sharp and detrimental drop in sales of current offerings as users wait for the new item.
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