Square’s New Circle: Banking on Data

Square brought small business payment terminals into the modern day. The simple, clean Square dongle has become widely recognized as the icon of new-age payment. Now, the company is eyeing its valuable set of transaction data to make loans. Square’s visibility into otherwise secretive transaction data allows them to loan to business owners on the basis of business performance.

Could this be the future of lending?

NYC BigApps: Crowdsourcing Civic Innovation

In 2009, New York City launched the BigApps competition, inviting citizen-hackers to work together to create applications that improve the lives of New Yorkers. BigApps spurred a grass-roots movement for an Open Data law and served as a fecund source of ideas for the Mayor’s office. The City of New York should increasingly use design thinking processes for application development. In addition, BigApps should challenge citizen-hackers to produce solutions to diverse problems, beyond the quotidian experience of software developers.

Broad use of Machine Learning at Ford

Players in the automotive industry are getting prepared for major disruptions to come in the next 10 to 15 years. Urban mobility (car/ride/bike sharing) and autonomous vehicles1 are disruptive trends that heavily rely on machine learning. A concern for traditional […]