The title is derived from the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith but also inspired by a recent post from Robert Scoble which said the Europe has been losing it's competitive edge . There is an expression called .. 'Maslow's hammer' which says that: 'When the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail.' In the case of Silicon Valley - that 'hammer' is Network effects i.e. Everything in the valley is about free, Long Tail, Twitter and Google etc etc et

Mobile apps are hot, but are even the best half-baked? Many of today's apps do a good job of tapping device capabilities, such as the iPhone's accelerometer or the G1's compass, but they don't make full use of information held in the mobile networks, such as connection speed or location, or operator's proven authentication, micro-billing and push messaging systems. By creating "application islands" that ignore the assets in the networks, the mobile industry "is missing the very thing that made

As more and more people use the mobile networks to access the Internet from smartphones, netbooks and laptops, a growing number of doom-mongers are warning that flat-rate data plans are unsustainable. They argue, with some justification, that operators are soon going to have to find new business models and sources of revenue to justify the investment in additional capacity and new technologies necessary to meet rising demand.How should operators go about this? First they need to calculate "the p