Interesting Businessweek writing - by Waldman & Vance

There's been a number of interesting pieces from Businessweek recently with feature stories out of the September 8-14 issue by Ashlee Vance and Peter Waldman and two additional short pieces by Vance.

The story from Waldman was "How to Get Into an Ivy League College—Guaranteed" on Steven Ma and his Bay Area-based ThinkTank Learning. It's a pretty fascinating read that shows the lengths some families will go to in order to help get kids into the best schools.

The Vance feature was "Silicon Valley's Most Hated Patent Troll Stops Suing and Starts Making" and an interesting look at both why the Seattle-based Intellectual Ventures so reviled in tech circles and new initiatives at the company.

Also by Vance, the same magazine issue had the short pieces "As Software and Hardware Advance Together, the Next Innovation Wave Rises" on the great advantage held by companies like Apple, Tesla Motors and Nest (now part of Google) and for the BW website Vance did "Why Microsoft Might Pay $2 Billion for Minecraft," with this last piece bringing to mind Robin Sloan's excellent "The secret of Minecraft" piece for Medium.