Startup founders, while their venture is still revenue-free, are not really self-employed. Unless they’ve also got a day job, they’re technically unemployed. This fact opens up opportunities for some really imaginative startup incentives
So I’m calling it: the margin of costs beyond a founder’s living expenses is now officially zero. What next?
Are so-called ‘clone startups’ (those hoping to be acquired by the mothership after creating a successful, ‘local language lookalike’) too easily dismissed as ‘non-innovators’?
Ty Danco’s ludicrously improbable but riveting tale definitely belongs in the history books, alongside AirBnB’s legendary ‘survive by literally eating your own marketing material’ yarn
If much higher-than-expected numbers of students join the ranks of the long-term unemployed, most student loans are going to remain unpaid indefinitely. Is the risk of student unemployment higher than the risk of failure for a startup accelerator-boosted founder?
Overall verdict: a bit of a ‘best kept secret’, offering more than enough insight into less-widely covered sectors of the startup investment scene to justify watching out for next year’s event
Government is understandably fed up with being blamed by society when it doesn’t handle things perfectly, so it wants to be seen to be handing at least some of the responsibility for doing things back to society, but…
If McKinsey’s believe in it, then even if you are unsure, you’d better get the best briefing you can: these videos may raise just as many questions as answers, but they’re a good starting point
Startup mentoring is education. Why can’t existing government-backed student loan schemes be extended to include startup founders attending accredited startup accelerator programmes?
Arts authorities caught publicly admitting to experimenting with ditching the ‘waterfall ‘ approach (where committees endlessly prepare vast unread(able) reports before anyone even considers trying anything new) only to discover that they can get strategic projects done quickly and well after all. Gasp!
The Economist calls you a post-materialist: you don’t feel driven by materialist ambitions. You just need enough to maintain your existing lifestyle, rather than improve it. But what does ‘not being your own boss’ mean in this context?
Even the dramatic recent reductions in the cost of spectacles and cataract operations are not doing enough to reduce the catastrophic impact that untreated sight conditions have in the third world, but strangely enough, our appetite for HD on our mobile phones will fix this
Should employers turn their business into startup factories? How could we make this happen?
Is that a 31 inch Minority Report interface in your pocket?
A YouTube clip of Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page playing a slow soulful country music version of a classical Chopin prelude with jazz-style backing at London’s Royal Albert Hall accompanied by a giant church organ. He was using a guitar internally modified so that you could bend its B string by pulling down against its shoulder strap peg in 1983
Steve Blank and Eric Ries each have different definitions of a startup to ours. None of us nail it
Startups attempt innovation under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Is it possible that we can find new ways to solve the world’s biggest problems using ‘extreme uncertainty’?
This starts off as a talk about startup methodology but somehow manages to morph into a sales pitch for an intriguing new solar technology. If you’re able to keep up with Bill Gross’s sometimes ferocious pace of delivery, stick with it, it’s well worth the ride
It doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia article yet (as at 2nd of February 2011). It came from someone called Steve Blank and a book from 2005, and yet it’s the hottest thing at all the top business schools. This video interview explains why
An epic transatlantic on-air wrangle over Google’s future. Veteran BBC innovation investigator Peter Day vs. US prediction guru Mark Anderson. They each put up a characteristically robust performance. But who won? Whatever, it was riveting radio.
The developing world has an insatiable hunger for everything our best universities have to offer. Are those universities doing enough to address this?
To get some insight into this new discipline, you might find this video describing the background to a researcher’s eureka moment well worth watching. It’s a talk by Geoffrey Ozin, widely regarded as the father of nanochemistry
Hidden away in an old ‘speaking showreel’ on YouTube: a showcase of the exceptional talents of René Carayol
Compulsory curriculum teaching (“push”) only works for those who don’t need to be pushed very hard: for the remaining billions on the planet, it’s often just too expensive to push
Vertical farmers offer their vision of the future in a video
Checking out these news stories may help you decide
A long-awaited documentary examines human mortality. The controversy is more about separating science from pseudo-science than about longevity
Will spoilt holidays and disrupted travel become a thing of the past? easyJet hopes its new technology will allow travellers to keep on flying, despite eruptions like the one earlier this year
Watch the new UK premier explaining his ideas about innovation, before he got the job
Is Wales about to become a hotspot for sustainable tech?
The interaction between startups and startup mentors has a fundamental difference from ‘apprenticeship’, something which has major implications for the future of innovation
Ever wondered what would happen if anyone actually bothered to check out those incessant claims everyone makes that ‘customer service standards are constantly improving’?
There’s a growing interest in introducing an entrepreneurial approach to innovation, whether its happening inside or outside the established organisation
They often seriously hate each other, administration and street folks. But some people out there just don’t care who hates them: they help these seemingly implacable haters help each other, they save lives and they save everyone money
Neuroscience offers the prospect of an incontrovertible record of the intentions behind everything we do, so jury trials may eventually be deemed unnecessary. But no chip implanted? Guilty as charged!
We’d all be forgiven for imagining that TechCrunch Disrupt and the DEMO Conference were the only regularly held innovation competition events worth talking about, as far as the tech media were concerned. So imagine my surprise…
Industrial energy waste turns out to be the most surprisingly overlooked opportunity to make outrageous returns on investment. Energy efficiency in industry is a shockingly untapped market. Modernisation at a single large industrial plant can free up an entire power station
What do you do when your own disruptive new ideas bump into The Innovator’s Dilemma in the large organisation that you work in? Geoffrey ‘Crossing The Chasm’ Moore thinks that this is not necessarily ‘game over’ after all
“What do you want to do here?” Get a job. “Sorry, but you’ll need to go straight back home right now, next please. So, what do you want to do here?” Start a business, employ people “Great! please sit over there with the others”
Is prohibiting this pursuit an infringement upon the freedom of the individual? Should we make this something that anyone should be able to do, wherever they are in the world?
It would have no problem with repetition, but it might find avoiding hesitation difficult and preventing accusations of deviation pretty much impossible
“Customer service here, we’ve decided to do whatever we can to put right this terrible thing that happened to you when you used AirBnB. For a start, can we have your bank details, so that we can immediately deposit a million dollars”
Instead of fanning the flames at the bonfire parties regularly held all over Cambridge to celebrate the outstanding achievements of chip designer ARM holdings, perhaps it’s time to splash on just a little cold water
Somehow, something as seemingly mundane as an ‘online errand service’ is helping us discover surprising new ways to support each other
They’ve already managed to print a kidney, so it’s only a matter of time. The replicators used are very affordable mods of off-the-shelf inkjets, but the cartridges? You guessed it
How do you draw the line between entertainment and non-entertainment uses? Who drives the innovation? Does industry get its inspiration from cinema and gaming, or is the entertainment business merely exploiting the technological advances made by the manufacturing industry?
They look like apps but they’re really stealth development tools which give your customers the ability to build themselves their own app for your service
The subjects include: nanomechanics, nanoelectronics, nanocomputing, nanoimaging, nanowires and nanofabrication
Twitter? Maybe he just got lucky. Square, the way to pay with your phone? Others may beat him to it. Square, the way to turn the rest of us into merchantpreneurs? Mr Dorsey may yet live to rule our world
VCs are interested in finding large, untapped markets. They use startups to do the market research needed to find them
TechCrunch writers Paul Carr and Sarah Lacy explore taking this to the next stage: he’s just brought out a memoir, The Upgrade, which breaches confidentiality pledges he made to her. Their unguarded video chat exposes intriguing differences between his blogger and book-writer personas. The book’s film rights have just been sold: so who will play Mike Arrington?
The offshoring phenomenon has provided strong support for the claim that simply increasing the number of suitable graduates will produce enough ‘potential for innovation’ to restore growth and jobs. Until now.
Of the incentives announced in the budget, perhaps the most important for innovation may be the increase in the rate of income tax relief. Share scheme specialist Russell Eisen compares the chancellor’s announcements with innovation champion Julie Meyer’s pre-budget suggestions
This topic is probably the most demanding in the whole field of selecting innovation writing as far as trying to ensure that the subject is being handled in a genuinely insightful way, but I think we’ve found a good selection
What are the differences in social media activity when comparing employed and unemployed people? Would you take on a job that was underpaid and unattractive, start or join a fun but non-paying, penniless startup, anything so as not to have fewer social experiences to share online?
What is the range of subject matter in our ‘spring collection’ of (weighty and in some cases expensive) Social Media volumes? Integration, culture, storytelling, journalism, transmedia, immersion, law, enterprise, strategy, teaching, meaning, creativity, identity, invention and belonging
Where in the world are the next systemic bubbles? Can we conceive of interventions which might genuinely mitigate the risks? Are the biggest challenges to banking innovation technological, cultural, governance related, or socio-geographic?
Management may be a ‘Cinderella issue’ in the innovation news space, eclipsed by social media, entrepreneurship and mobile technology. Nonetheless, academia is responding to growing industry demands for accredited innovation management capability
So says respected social media researcher Jeremiah Owyang. And he’s got the facts and figures to back up his claims. He also advises how to do it, how not to do it, and how to make money helping others do it.
So many ideas, all coming at you at once. Don’t expect these people to pour anything onto the flames but gasoline. iPad (and tablet) apps from a content creation perspective
If you bought into all the hubris about the ‘inevitable’ demise of charging for content, you might imagine that debating the future of licensing was pointless. Or just dull. Watching this might change your mind
A superb panel video from Princeton covers just about everything: Angels, Venture Capital, Intellectual Property as well as the academic, engineering and technology licensing perspectives
Same as the old boss: I don’t think so; if you can’t demonstrate to her that you can truly innovate, don’t even bother applying for the job
Even his much more famous brother is probably not as famous online
Sounds like you need to watch a Video of the Synthetic Biology Debate at the Edinburgh Science Festival
It’s all the consumer’s fault (green mobile phone consciousness is only just warming up)
The British government has begun the process of distributing £325 million to small and medium-sized businesses.
Renowned educational critic Steve Peha is unconvinced that any of the current or proposed major educational reform initiatives will change anything. Ever.
No, you don’t need to be a brain surgeon to find this fascinating: bio-integrated electronics is full of unimaginably weird but useful things you can do with things like, you know, live brains. It’s all about making electronic things rubbery
At least five of these forthcoming titles major on a healthcare or safety aspect, illustrating just how far this particular management approach has come from its original niche
Sharing is useful, right? Motherhood and apple pie, surely? The stampede of sacred cows being ruthlessly sacrificed in this extraordinary video bonfire of academic vanities lends it an intoxicating but perhaps far too beefy aroma for some
Is it just about speeding up the rate at which startups emerge, or making them grow faster, or just unintentionally hurrying them on to an earlier demise?
The name Plumpy’nut may sound quirky, but this ridiculously simple product idea is already keeping countless famine-struck children from starvation and will save millions of lives
It’s an engagement and integration problem
No British press coverage for a major innovation story: biotech legend Una Ryan secures funding from both the UK’s Department for International Development and the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation
Tractors, farm equipment, built at around one eighth the cost. Industrial equipment too. Superior design. Handmade quality. Problem? Investment. Solve it, and Jakubowski becomes a household word. That might just happen anyway.
Does this talk, four months before the announcement offer the best insight into the thinking behind it?
I have no idea if any startup working within these constraints could possibly work. I’m even not sure what the benefit, if any, of doing anything like this would be. But it’s got a kind of crazy logic to it and I have decided that it will be fun, or else, so here goes: on day one, the open startup has no secrets…
Maybe it’s just something that nobody wanted to talk about. Large organisations had, over the years, paid countless professors to study the shortcomings of large organisations, leaving the trials and tribulations of the startup unstudied, waiting for Steve Blank to one day notice something shockingly consistent about the way most startups spin out of control
Far too often, we only present problems when someone wants to talk about their solutions. So here’s a seriously problem-rich, solution-craving topic: The Economic Impact of Biodiversity
Is this the answer to investor worries about incubator failure?
Private equity hesitancy contrasted with prompt public funding of green innovation
A giant corporation gives us a crash course on their novel approach to innovation [Video]
Who are those guys? If they don’t build cars, what do they do? This short video tells you exactly what the eCar guys do.
Outline of the London Business Angels
A charmingly British academic video explaining the nuts and bolts, so to speak, of nanotechnology.
Small traditional businesses? They’re already ‘inside’ the startup world, aren’t they? No. They typically know nothing about such things as Lean Startup, Startup Weekend or Y Combinator, and even when they do, they think it has nothing to do with them. Are they right?
If Artificial Intelligence is going to automate the world’s entire workforce, we’re all going to need to give up any hope of employment and become startup entrepreneurs and innovation investors instead. They couldn’t possibly automate those, could they?
The range of startup titles has expanded dramatically this year, and whatever economic surprises may be in store for us in 2012, this particular sector is looking unstoppable.
Educational miracle worker Sugata Mitra doesn’t take on small challenges. His original breath-taking discoveries overturned everything we knew about early self-teaching. He’s back with enough equally shocking, more recent findings to justify you watching for fifty minutes.
A startup only has to take one person out of unemployment to make a net contribution to job growth. Instead of ‘Jobseekers Allowance’ why not ‘Business Model Seekers Allowance’?
Die-hard sceptics still regarding it as little more than a convenient excuse for a lack of interest in or dedication to study may be surprised by this video, which reflects impressive academic achievement in a discipline which simultaneously challenges, derives value from and provides support for the cognitive distinctiveness that dyslexia represents
Looking for a video covering the latest developments in the interface between flesh, mind and machine, from fully functional transplants to limb replacements offering superhuman capabilities?
Ten ideas for weaving the lean, low-investment, iterative, failure-tolerant, build-measure-learn attitude toward giving people constructive ways to spend their time into the fabric of every culture
Surprisingly, we had the opposite problem to our usual one with this category: this time we were not quite as inundated with contenders
Everyone’s telling us that this young woman has used videos in a new, inspiring way, so we went on a hunt for the videos they inspired
The iij compares innovation-friendly policy suggestions offered prior to the UK budget with the measures that were actually announced by the chancellor
The video never went viral, probably because it has an unexplained ‘interlude’ after 42 minutes 57 seconds which makes it seem to end at a random point. This bizarre showstopping moment didn’t deter your intrepid iij innovation hunters (it actually resumes after about a minute of onscreen weirdness) from recognizing a gem and it certainly shouldn’t stop you watching it
Most of the consumer technologies of 20 years ago seem ludicrously primitive today, whereas, for many diseases, current biotech leaves us almost as powerless to prevent the suffering and death of millions today as we were generations ago. However, it still offers the tantalising prospect of unlocking nature’s technology, and potentially rendering all our diseases and current consumer tech obsolete
These titles aren’t available yet, but you may need to move quickly once they are. Agile software development may be rapidly moving into the mainstream, but that doesn’t mean the innovation in that field is slowing down
The new breed of angels: as much ‘startup coentrepreneurs’ as they are investors. Executive control, once obligatory, now seen as a liability, is being replaced with new brands of investor offerings which minimise dilution and instead creatively collaborate to facilitate leanness and opportunistic market agility. VCs are keenly studying this new wizardry
Shame on us for not managing to get a top ten startup book list out at the end of last year, but most of these titles are barely a month old. Some are obvious choices, but others are quite specialised and deserve more attention than they’ve received
A carefully selected (but woefully incomplete) list of some fascinating titles that you can’t buy yet
Or how you might create the really big society. Yes, it will probably create some serious chaos. But who said being disruptive should be tidy?
One Laptop Per Child plans to have an open source $75 tablet PC with a semi-flexible plastic touch screen available in 2012.
Herman Hauser persuades the government to create innovation centres
Outline of the London Technology Fund.
Outline of BASF Venture Capital.
The UK provides the best environment for innovation investment according to BASF Venture Capital investment manager Dr Oliver Guthmann.