Shane Greenstein

Dear reader, I have been doing these essays for many years. For the most recent essays, click here. The essays on this page were the basis for my book. Here they are in their original form. They are divided into categories by topic. I take great joy in writing these and hope others take away something from reading them. The book is titled Diamonds are Forever, Computers are Not. Economic and Strategic Management in Computing Markets. For an outline of my new book, click here (doc). You may purchase this book from the publisher at the following link at Imperial College Press and World Scientific Press.

Diffusion in broader perspective {mostly in good fun}

August, 2001	An earful about Zvi's e-mail	A personal favorite. About the diffusion of email & some parting words about Zvi Griliches
December, 1999	Virulent Word of Mouse	About diffusion by word of mouth for internet software
August, 1997	The Biology of Technology	Life cycle metaphors in technology development, one of my most popular columns
August, 1995	Diamonds are Forever, Computers are not	A personal favorite. Comparing a PC to a diamond.
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Industry Evolution in broader perspective {mostly in good fun}
May, 2000	The Era of Impatience	A comment on the frenzy atmosphere of the end of the Internet boom
October, 1998	Return of the Jaded	One of my favorites. The PC industy as the Star Wars trilogy
April, 1997	It has bugs, but the games are out of this world	Written for birthday celebration for HAL, the computer from 2001, also a favorite
April, 1996	A Birthday Even a Curmudgeon Could Love	Written for the 25 year anniversary of the microprocessor invention
December, 1995	Not a Young and Restless Marke	Another favorite. The release of Windows 95 as an episode in a soap opera
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Managing uncertainty, understanding its sources and its consequences
January, 2002	The ride before the fall	Most popular essay ever. IEEE Micro called this the "inside scoop on the high-tech stock market bust."
September, 2001	Explaining booms, busts, and errors	Three errors common to dot-bombs illustrate how new technology markets develop
June 2001	Shortfalls, downturns, and recessions	What a downturn means in high tech, why it was hard to forecast
June, 1999	Forecasting Commercial Change	Why some types of change are inherently difficult to predict
August, 1998	Uncertainty, Prediction and the Unexpected	The basic economics of uncertainty in high technology
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Convergence and platforms
February, 1999	When Technologies Converge	Basic economics of convergence
June, 1998	Industrial Economics of Platforms and Strategy	This is a long piece on platforms. Translates academics into normal language
October, 1997	Contrasting Opinions about Convergence	Thinking about different ways convergence happens
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Understanding the on-line world
April, 2001	Pricing Internet Access	Myths and facts in commercial internet pricing
April, 2000	A Revolution? How do you Know?	Another comment on the atmosphere of the present age
August, 1999	Building the Virtual World	How firms differentiate at the nexus of virtual and non-virtual
December, 1998	Commercializing the Internet	What factors enabled this to happen so fast?
February, 1996	The Salad Days of On-line Shopping	About Peapod in the early days

Microsoft's antitrust problems in perspective
October 2000	Falling through the cracks at Microsoft	Putting the issues in broader perspective
August, 2000	Hung up on AT&T	Why AT&T is not a good historical example
February, 2000	Agressive Business Tactics: Are There Limits?	About the findings of fact
April, 1999	Bill, Act like a Mensch!	About the political economy of the antitrust case
April, 1998	The Ties That Bind: Foreseeing Foreclosure	My cautious opinion before the case was fought
June, 1997	Let's Play Monopoly	What seemed to be at issue before the details came out
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Observations about buyer behavior
February, 1997	How coinvention Shapes our Market	Why customizing general purpose computing requires co-invention
June, 1996	Up-grading, Catching-Up and Shooting for Par	Not all users are on the cutting edge, but that is ok nonetheless
October, 1995	Client-Server Demand and Legacy Systems	Reporting on an academic piece about replacing mainframes with client/server
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Macro-economics and computing
November, 2001	E-business Infrastructure	How the US Census attempts to measure E-business infrastructure.
February, 2001	Measure for Measure in the New Economy	Why the benefits from IT investment are hard to measure.
October, 1999	Banking on the Internet	Alan Greenspan and how the internet is changing the economy
August, 1996	Debunking the Productivity Paradox	Misunderstandings in popular press about the benefits from investment in IT
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Some topical policy issues in perspective
March, 2002	Competition Policy for High Tech Industries	The FTC as it formulates the next generation of policy. My brief opinion
December, 2000	PCs, the Internet, and you	Reflections on policy in the PC industry at the turn of the new century
February, 1998	To have and to have not	The digital divide and other distributional issues in the information economy
December, 1996	Don't Call it a Highway	A critique of the popular metaphor
October, 1996	Repetitive Stress Injuries	How this comes about and what to do about it
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Miscellaneous
December, 1997	The Software Industry Through an Academic Looking Glass	A book review of the book edited by David Mowery
	The Tape Story Tapestry	Observations about the pitfalls of doing research in the digital age. The story of getting the data for my thesis

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SHANE GREENSTEIN