Writing

Dr Robin Gaster

Dr. Robin Gaster
rgaster@incumetrics.com
240-462-4409

My Amazon articles here and elsewhere

2021.  Into the Future: Amazon and the Rise of Personal Healthcare. Healthcare Business Today. The future of healthcare will be data-driven, highly personalized – and increasingly centered within the home. Amazon is perfectly placed to use Alexa as the gateway for highly  a highly disruptive drive into healthcare.

2021.  Beyond Bezos: As Amazon CEO, Andy Jassy must address these challenges first. Technical.ly. Jassy faces 9 key challenges in taking over.

2021.  EU Competition Complaints Against Amazon: No Big Deal? CEO World. The EU is clearly aiming regulatory weapons at Big Tech, but Amazon is well-placed to avoid most consequences, and those that remain are in line with long term Amazon strategy.

2021. Amazon and the Unions: More Noise than Impact? IT Business Why even a win in Bessemer would not be the start of successful unionization in the Amazon warehouses.

2021. A Case Study at Beating Amazon at the Platform Game: Building a Successful Commercial Platform. CEO World. How Gearflow is building a specialized platform to take Amazon on in construction parts.

2021.  Beyond Bezos: Nine Challenges Facing Andy Jassy. Chief Executive. The key strategic challenges facing Jeff Bezos’s successor.

2020. Balancing the Behemoth: Amazon and the Disinfecting Power of Sunlight. Why we need to regulate Amazon, why antitrust is the wrong way to go, and why radical transparency is a much better option. Based on Behemoth, Amazon Rising.

Interview articles (where I am the primary source)

2021 Forget Alexa: Astro is the Next Step in Amazon’s Infiltration of Your Home  David Lumb. Tech Radar.

2021. Amazon Is A Marvel Of Digital Capitalism And That Is The Problem. Forbes. Pamela N. Danzinger. Major review article for Behemoth.

2021.  An argument for a new kind of regulation of Amazon and other tech giants.  Digital Commerce 360. Don Davis. Major review article for Behemoth, focused especially on the need for regulation.

2021. Exclusive Q&A: Can Anything Slow the Amazon Behemoth? Retail Touchpoints Adam Blair interview.

2021. Take Five: Amazon’s Growth Tests us in Profound Ways. Inside Business. Joe Vanden Plas interview.

2021. Amazon will take the battle against its first union in the US to the end. EFE (in Spanish). Marc Arcas

Economics and innovation articles

2018.  The Productivity Paradox: Why Current Productivity Data Misses the Point. Detailed analysis showing the failure of productivity data to capture change in a modern economy.

2017 The Parable of the Bank Tellers. Why it’s easy to mistake industry growth for employment, and why bank jobs are disappearing  and their wages falling.

2017 Millennial Economics: The Big Squeeze. Why Millennials are suffering, and why they are the canary in the jobs coalmine.     

Posts and articles about SBIR

2020 Solving the Survey’s Dilemma: Estimating Future Returns From Innovation Program Investments. Why surveys systematically under-estimate the returns from innovation programs, and how to correct that problem.2018 SBIR FAQ: a Non-Technical Introduction. Answers the most common questions asked about the SBIR program.

2017 Impacts of the SBIR Program. Summarizes the current state of knowledge about SBIR impacts.

2016 Explaining the Decline in SBIR Phase I Applications. How the impact of business cycles, shifting budgets, and agency strategy explains application patterns at the five major SBIR agencies

Other Writing

2014-2016 Lead researcher, National Research Council reports on SBIR programs at DoD, NSF, NASA, NIH, and DoE, as well as the STTR program. See National Academies SBIR page

2013 Lead researcher,  Manufacturing in the 21st Century: the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, National Research Council

2007-2009 Lead researcher, National Research Council reports on the SBIR program and individual volumes on NIH, DoD, NASA, and DoE.

2010 (with Charles Wessner) The Myth of The Mills, ASTRA Innovation Briefs. PDF

1999 ”The Information Revolution: Urban Infrastructure for the Next Millennium,” in Business Briefing: World Urban Economic Development, World Bank

1998 The 21st Century Communications Company, Economist Intelligence Unit

1996 Bit By Bit: Building a Transatlantic Partnership for the Information Age .M.E.Sharpe (with E.Olbetter, A.Bolster, and C.Prestowitz)

1993 Bridging the Atlantic, Economic Strategy Institute

1993 “Our Interests in Europe,” The Atlantic Monthly (August)

1993 “Trade, Technology, and Foreign Direct Investment: The International Dimensions of Domestic Economic Policy,” Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy Briefing Paper

1993 “The Drunk Under the Lamp-Post Problem: The Clinton Administration and technology Policy,” paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference

1992 “Protectionism with Purpose: Guiding Foreign Investment” Foreign Policy

1991 “Trading Up to Prosperity,” The Atlanta Journal (op-ed)

1991 “Less coordination will mean a richer Europe,” Newsday op-ed

1991 “Research and Technology Policy,” in Leon Hurwitz and Christian Lequesne eds. The State of the European Community,  Lynne Reiner, Boulder Co.

1988 “Sex, Spies, and Scandal: the Profumo Affair in British Politics,” in the Politics of Scandal, Andrei Markovitz and Mark Silverstein, eds. Holmes and Meier, NY

Private Reports and Assessments

2010 An Innovation Design and Implementation Plan, Ministry of Science and technology, Saudi Arabia

2001 Measuring and Sustaining the New Economy, report for the National Academy of Sciences

2001 Ecommerce and U.S. Public Policy: Strategic Opportunities for DTT report for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

2001 Positioning DTT in the Network Economy: A Role for the Deloitte Forums report for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu

1999 Local Online Communities, report for the Electric Power Research Institute

1999 Broadband opportunities, report for the Cantermore Group

1998 Internet Security Issues, report for  Thayer Associates

1998 The Convergence Project: Interim Report assessment for Deloitte and Touche

1997 Electronic Publishing: Marketing Opportunities in the Global Information Age, report for King Publishing

1997 Riding the Distance Learning Express: The Coming Revolution in Distance learning and How Publishers can Profit from it, report for Houghton Mifflin

1997 New Markets for Houghton Mifflin’s College Textbooks: Toward a Paradigm of Alliance-centered Publishing,  report for Houghton Mifflin

1995 Report subject to confidentiality. Dataquest

1995 Transforming the Electric Power Business: the Role of Demand Side Management in a Deregulating Industry, report for Mitsubishi Research

1995 Second Annual Report on the National Information Infrastructure, report for the European Commission (DGXII), Philips, Olivetti, Bull, S.A.

1994 The National Information Infrastructure: A Preliminary Report, for the European Commission (DGXIII), Philips, Olivetti, Bull S.A..

1993 Leading the Learning Curve: The First 300 Days of The Clinton Technology Policy, report for the European Commission (DGXIII)

1992 “European Industrial Policy,” in Europe and the United States: Competition and Cooperation in the 1990’s, Committee on Foreign Affairs, U.S.Congress

1992 “Europe and America after 1992,” testimony before the Budget Committee, U.S. House of Representatives

1991 “EC-92: Trade and Industrial Policy,” in Competing Economies: America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim, Office of Technology Assessment, U.S.Congress

1989 Winners and Losers in the Industrial Countries: Success and Failure among the Manufacturing Industries of the G-7 Countries 1964-84, report  to the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S.Congress

1989 EC-1992: Completion of the Internal Market in Europe, report for the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S.Congress

1988 White-collar Unions in Britain: Patterns of Development 1900-1960, report to the Office of Technology Assessment, U.S.Congress

Other major documents (business plans, grant proposals, etc.)

2014 Primary author of business plan for the Stepping Stone initiative at the Education development center

2001 Kansas City Swope Parkway Health Center SBIR Partnership grant application to the National Institutes of Health

2001 RW Ventures/KCNA grant applications to MacArthur and other major foundations (with others)

2001 Montgomery County Md. Parent’s Guide plan and proposal

2000 courses411.com business plan

2000 Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance TOPs Proposal (with others)

1999 Enersphere business plan (funded through acquisition of Enersphere by Urbana, Inc) (with others)

1998 SNIP! Software business and implementation plan (resulted in acquisition of predecessor company)

1997 LocalNet Business Plan (funded by angel investors in 1998)