Student Entrepreneurs: If Peter Thiel Calls — Hang Up. MIT researcher says he can predict Twitter trends — Data | GigaOM. The Twilight of the Elites - 10 Ideas for the Next 10 Years. In the past decade, nearly every pillar institution in American society — whether it's General Motors, Congress, Wall Street, Major League Baseball, the Catholic Church or the mainstream media — has revealed itself to be corrupt, incompetent or both. And at the root of these failures are the people who run these institutions, the bright and industrious minds who occupy the commanding heights of our meritocratic order.
In exchange for their power, status and remuneration, they are supposed to make sure everything operates smoothly. But after a cascade of scandals and catastrophes, that implicit social contract lies in ruins, replaced by mass skepticism, contempt and disillusionment. In the wake of the implosion of nearly all sources of American authority, this new decade will have to be about reforming our institutions to reconstitute a more reliable and democratic form of authority. Next The Boring Age. Business & Economics | Anthony D. Williams. Business Incubation to Support Business Growth | Ontario Business Report.
So you have a great business idea. But how do you turn that idea into reality? What do you need? What are the steps? How do you create a successful business? Many of the answers can be found in a business incubation program. More than 130 business and technology incubation centres are currently operating across Canada, including about 30 in Ontario. Each one is designed to nurture the success and growth of new and early stage businesses to the point that they are stable and profitable. “The goal of business incubation is to help businesses flourish in the community, create jobs in the community, and pay taxes in the community,” explains Ed Hobbs, Chair of the Canadian Association of Business Incubation (CABI) and General Manager of the Toronto Business Development Centre. “Incubation provides entrepreneurs with professional support, practical advice, physical space and the benefit of a network,” he adds.
In Canada, two out of three new businesses do not survive their fifth year. The dirty secret behind the incubator boom. “It’s people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They’re making our food out of people. Next thing they’ll be breeding us like cattle for food.” Detective Thorn, Soylent Green By its very nature, entrepreneurship involves a certain amount of throwing spaghetti against a wall. Our “spaghetti” is called a minimal viable product, and we launch them because nobody really knows what’s going to stick. Eventually, with a little luck and learning, we’ll become better chefs, and our spaghetti will stay up more often than not. But while watching a recent demo day for one of the countless incubators that have sprung up in the last 18 months, I was struck by a horrifying revelation. While the decreasing cost of launching a startup has been almost universally celebrated, one of the downsides has been a flood of would-be entrepreneurs into the Internet space. As market forces dictate, when there is an overabundance of a certain resource, the value of that resource decreases.
How about expertise? Are Incubators Really Necessary for Startup Success? Twice a year, every tech website seems to devote lavish coverage to just what startups made it into Y Combinator’s latest class. It’s the tech world’s version of covering the presidential primaries: Plenty of these companies aren’t going to exist in a few years (or perhaps even in a few months), but some may go on to do great things.
For those of us actually bent on founding our own startups, the coverage creates mixed feelings. It’s great to see people actually making it. But all the press also reinforces the feeling that every startup needs to go through an incubator in order to succeed. That can be incredibly frustrating for startup entrepreneurs. Not only do we need to come up with a great idea, we have to make sure that it’s something that works for an incubator. Guest author Thursday Bram is the editor of 21times.org, a daily email newsletter for developers and entrepreneurs who want to turn their side projects into viable businesses.
There Is Value in Incubators The Counter-Argument. Incubators matter: The average Y Combinator company is worth $45.2M. Does it matter whether your fledgling company spends a stint in an incubator? Does it ever! Forbes‘ recent ranking of incubators around the country found that the average Y Combinator company is worth $45.2 million. Just try doing that on your own. That’s the average across 172 companies, mind you: The total value of all Y Combinator companies is $7.8 billion. As the article notes, Andreessen Horowitz, Yuri Milner, and Ron Conway together have provided a guarantee of $150,000 in funding for every company accepted to the prestigious club.
The number-two incubator on the list is TechStars, which started in Boulder, Colo., and now has spaces in New York, Seattle, Boston, and San Antonio, Texas. “It’s become a new college for entrepreneurs because we’re so selective on front end,” said TechStars founder David Cohen, of the incubator model. DreamIt Ventures (Philadelphia, New York, and Israel), AngelPad (San Francisco), and LaunchPad LA round out the top 5 in Forbes’ list. Via Forbes. Food Distribution in Horn of Africa Goes High Tech.
Cathy Herholdt, World Concern 206-546-7374 (office) 425-205-7412 (cell)cathyh@worldconcern.org October 2, 2012 (SEATTLE) – World Concern’s voucher system for distributing food in the Horn of Africa crisis is about to go high tech. The Seattle-based humanitarian organization is piloting a new mobile app in the drought-stricken region, aiming to streamline the process of tracking food distributed to hungry families and payment to local merchants. The app was developed by Seattle start up ScanMyList, whose founder, Scott Dyer, developed a mobile application to help retail businesses track inventory.
When Dyer saw one of World Concern’s vouchers, he realized the same system could help the humanitarian organization reach people during a disaster more efficiently and track aid more accurately. The system tracks beneficiaries and the food they receive via bar codes that are scanned into a mobile phone. “Not many people can say they’ve birthed an idea and seen it to fruition,” said Dyer. The Business Bridge Initiative. Smartphone use in Rural India. Mobile and smartphone use in urban and rural India Jerry Watkins a *, Kathi R. Kitner b and Dina Mehta c School of Humanities and Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney, Australia; Intel Labs, Portland, OR, USA; Convo Ltd, Mumbai, India Between 32 and 74 million smartphones are forecast in the Indian market by2015.This article looks more closely into this phenomenon by comparing two studiesconducted at urban and rural sites in India.
Background For those seeking evidence of a shift in social and cultural behaviours facilitated by mobiletechnologies, consider this estimate: by 2015, four major regions (sub-Saharan Africa,Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East) and 40 countries will have more peoplewith mobile network access than with access to electricity at home. ISSN 1030-4312 print/ISSN 1469-3666 online q *Corresponding author. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. The cycle from aggregation to disaggregation. But how does LinkedIn get unbundled? What's the mechanic? The dynamics of smartphones discussed above make it easier to unbundle Facebook. Craigslist's main strength is volume of traffic, and if you can gain an edge in a particular segment you can overcome that.
But neither of those dynamics quite apply to LinkedIn. The core of LinkedIn is that it's the universal CV database. So it seems to me that the low-hanging fruit is the stuff that LinkedIn just isn't doing while it pursues the Huffpo dream. The puzzle is at what point that matters to LinkedIn. Perhaps the answer is that tech history is full of dead companies that had mediocre product but great lock-ins. Emerging Tech: 9 International Startup Hubs to Watch | Slideshow. Dublin, Ireland image credit: Luxe Travel Logitech, Rovio and Skype -- these three companies produce products as mainstream as keyboards, services as cutting edge as video chatting, and games as addictive as Angry Birds.
While each is different, they all began as startups outside the U.S. and experienced the kind of success that propelled their brands across borders worldwide. All over the globe, tech entrepreneurs are striving for similar results. But where are they starting up? Beyond London and Tel Aviv, many are gravitating to some unlikely locations to try to realize their business dreams. Here's a look at nine international tech startup hubs that might be under your radar. Image credit: INS Fleeing large metro areas like London and Paris, app developers and internet entrepreneurs aplenty have found a home in the Netherlands, attracted by lower taxes and living costs, and a creative lifestyle that fosters open innovation. image credit: Nature image credit: Jason Pitcher.
Special Report - 20 Forecasts for 2010-2025. The Single Most Critical Skill for the 21st Century 7 Ways to Spot Tomorrow’s Trends Today How to Succeed in an Age of Hyper-Change How Foresight Built a Fortune Forecast #1 : Electric cars powered by fuel cells earn extra cash for their owners — Your next car may help pay for itself by selling its excess electricity back to the power company. Researchers in the Netherlands have developed electric cars using fuel cells that convert biogas or hydrogen into electricity. Then, while the car is parked, it generates extra electricity that you can sell to the power company for extra cash. Forecast #2 : Open-source robot blueprints cut the cost of robots by 90% — Robot development may soon dramatically accelerate thanks to new open-source hardware-sharing systems.
Similar to open-source software for computers, this new robot-development platform allows participants to share their designs so that other developers can adapt or improve on them. 3-D Printing Revolutionizes Manufacturing.