Wired Magazine interviews author Robert Neuwirth on black market entrepreneurs. The underground economy, Neuwirth says, is the second-largest economy on Earth (after the U.S.) and is a major source of innovation.
Is Microsoft doomed to fail? Does the LinkedInIPO signal a new bubble? Is Google the model of success? Silicon Valley entrepreneur, writer, and professor, Steve Blanks, makes a number of bold assertions about the state of tech-based businesses in this Business Insider article.
For more information about Steve Blanks, visit his website.
The new generation of workers wants to be a part of organizations that are structured more like the bottom-up social media environment than the typical top-down corporation, says Gary Hamel. Watch the video below to learn more.
Check out Entrepreneur Magazine‘s fascinating profile of Angelo Sotira, co-founder and CEO of DeviantART, a popular social network (over 14 million members) for visual artists of all kinds. Sotira and his colleagues created an innovative architecture to support online creative communities years before Facebook and MySpace, with features that those more famous social networks later appropriated. The article covers Sotira’s career, DeviantART’s history, its plans for the future, and also features a short video about Sotira and DeviantART.
Norm Augustine believes that America is falling behind other countries like China and India in technological innovation. This is because our culture portrays engineers and scientists as nerds rather than venerating them, because our educational system deemphasizes science and math, and because we don’t invest enough in long-term basic research. “Despite what many Americans believe,” he writes, “our nation does not possess an innate knack for greatness. Greatness must be worked for and won by each new generation.”
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Read our Kaizen interview with Judy Estrin, in which she covers similar themes.
It’s easy to understand the importance of innovators and entrepreneurs to the economy, but it’s much harder to figure out the best ways to encourage more entrepreneurship. In an article for TechCrunch, Vivek Wadhwa explores Start-Up Chile, a program that he calls “Chile’s Grand Innovation Experiment.” Most initiatives to create the next Silicon Valley have failed, Wadhwa argues, because they use a top-down approach that fatally leaves out the most important ingredient — the entrepreneurs themselves. Start-up Chile is therefore unique because, rather than building office parks and partnering with VC’s and universities, it focuses on attracting innovators and entrepreneurs from all over the world to Chile, where they will start their own businesses.
Popular Science has a great, in-depth feature on the best innovations of 2010. The feature lists 100 innovations from various categories, including auto tech, computing, gadgets, green tech, and home entertainment, as well as the grand awards for the most innovative from each category. There are also interesting profiles of several innovators.
Check out the feature on Popular Science.
Last week, Big Think started a ten day series on the future of capitalism. Through articles and videos, the series examines the impact on capitalism of technologies such as 3D printing, virtual products and currencies, data analysis, and the relationship between governments and markets. Also featured is an interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and co-founder of Conscious Capitalism with recent CEE guest speaker Michael Strong.
Via the Policy Forum on Entrepreneurship, here is a good New York Times article on entrepreneurship in Argentina. With the government in debt, and with little access to credit, “slowly, Argentines are beginning to trust and invest in each other.” The article profiles the founders of a software startup as examples of how the response of individuals to the stormy economic climate of Argentina is changing.
Aviation Week recently published a feature on aerospace startup SpaceX. The company is known to actively recruit the best, most enterprising talent. “In fact, [SpaceX founder, CEO, and CTO Elon Musk] considers this entrepreneurial mind-set to be even more important than the smarts of his new employees, opposing the more traditional hiring practices of his competitors.” From the company website: “Established in 2002 by Elon Musk , the founder of PayPal and the Zip2 Corporation, SpaceX has already developed two brand new launch vehicles, established an impressive launch manifest, and been awarded COTS funding by NASA to demonstrate delivery and return of cargo to the International Space Station.”
Read the Aviation Week article here.
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