Have you seen the Verizon ad? The one that starts with LeBron James walking toward the camera and then saying "We don't need more LeBrons"? He's followed in quick succession by other celebrities, including model Adriana Lima, quarterback Drew Brees and soccer star David Villa, all saying we don't need more of their kind. The ad wraps up by saying what we do need is more people in science and technology to fill the 4 million jobs available. Fair enough. The world runs on science and technology. But there's an unintended consequence that comes with that. Technology is making the …

The thing about Facebook that makes it so powerful is that it has the courage of its convictions. When Mark Zuckerberg made his first play in virtual reality, it was a big one. He purchased the Oculus Rift for $2 billion back in 2014. You can argue that Oculus hasn't had a big impact, and has had more than its share of internal drama and turnover. But the Oculus purchase brought some serious VR talent in-house. Facebook has been working hard to turn that early bet into a global phenomenon. Now we're starting to see the output of this investment, …

It was a shocking headline: "Google Home Mini spied on user 'thousands of times a day,' sent recordings to Google." But not really that shocking. Home, Echo, Siri... they all have a job to do: wait until you say their name, and then deliver whatever you ask. But here's the catch: In order to hear you saying their name, they have to listen. All. The. Time.

As a group, the most creative thinkers and doers that I have worked with have been engineers. Yes, engineers. There's a reason that Silicon Valley has driven so much innovation in the Internet era and the people that have delivered the best solutions have been engineers. (And I write this as a digital entrepreneur who is proud of his liberal arts education.)

AI is the buzzword of the moment. As the the hype gets greater and greater, it becomes challenging to sort through the noise. Let me help you out with that.

Design is important. Thinking through how people will respond to the aesthetics of your product is an admirable thing. I remember once having the pleasure of sharing a stage with JetBlue's vice president of marketing, Amy Curtis-McIntyre. She explained how important good design was to the airline's overall marketing strategy. A tremendous amount of thought went into the aesthetics of all its printed materials -- even those cards explaining the airplane's safety features that none of us ever read. But on JetBlue, not only did passengers read the cards; they stole them because the cards were so cleverly designed. Was …

On Oct. 1, just after 10 p.m., my social media feeds lit up with reports of an "active shooter" at a Las Vegas music festival. Exhausted from a constant drumbeat of terrible news, I rested my eyes from the screen in my hand and then did something I rarely do: I shut off my phone. The next morning, as the media did double duty, covering the sheer scale of the carnage and trying to understand the "why," 'I found myself painfully thinking of some events in my past. Was I in any way to blame? Had I shirked my responsibility …

According to a recent survey, all respondents -- marketing-driven advertisers -- ranked their own internal process, or "way of working," as their biggest obstacle to delivering effective marketing strategies.

The simple fact is that the tasks we do every day will not be replaced by AI for a long time. It's almost 2018, 50 years after "2001" the movie was released, and we still have nothing even close to HAL -- who, by the way, was dealing with a simple problem space. The dystopian world predicted by the pundits won't happen until an AI can fix a leaking toilet at 524 73rd St. Brooklyn, N.Y., right now. Until then, a plumber will make more money than a strategy consultant, and probably should. If you are a normal person, this …

When did Taylor Swift become the second most powerful person in social media? We all know who the most powerful person is in social right now. I refuse to talk about this today because it'll just get me upset. I would much rather talk about the person who has the next-most influence: Taylor Swift.Swift is obviously a real person who puts out real music that connects with millions and millions of people. Whether you like her or not, she does write some catchy stuff. I myself prefer something with a little more grit, but I respect what she does, and …