Tag Archives: Ecosystems

A Library of Books about Startups, High-Tech, Innovation

I began this blog in July 2007, so more than 15 years ago. I began my professional activity around startups in September 1997, so more than 25 years ago. So many adventures, so many great moments. And so much book reading! I revisited these pages and did an exhaustive list of the books I could remember reading. Most have a post somewhere in the blog.

I created a little artificially 6 categories:
– About Google and Apple
– Entrepreneurs’ Biographies
– Startup Stories and Analyses
– Ecosystems and Innovation
– Venture Capital
– How to
– Fictions / Thrillers (or close)

Here they are… Enjoy (maybe!)

About Google and Apple

Goomics, Google’s corporate culture revealed through internal comics, Manu Cornet
In the Plex, How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives, Stephen Levy
How Google Works, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg
Dogfight, How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution, Fred Vogelstein
I’M Feeling Lucky, Falling On My Feet in Silicon Valley, Douglas Edwards
The Apple Revolution, Steve Jobs, the Counter Culture and How the Crazy Ones Took Over the World, Luke Dormehl
Work Rules! Insights from inside Google that will transform how you live and lead, Laszlo Bock
The Google Story, David Vise
Return to the Little Kingdom, How Apple and Steve Jobs Changed the World, Michael Moritz

Biographies

Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for A Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance
Steve Jobs, La vie d’un génie, Walter Isaacson
Inside Steve’s Brain, Leander Kahney
The Man Behind the Microchip, Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, Leslie Berlin

Startups Stories / Analyses

Trillion Dollar Coach, The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell, Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle
L’entrepreneuriat en action, Ou comment de jeunes ingénieurs créent des entreprises innovantes, Philippe Mustar
Chercheurs et entrepreneurs : c’est possible ! Belles histoires du numérique à la française, Laurent Kott, Antoine Petit
Bad Blood, Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carreyrou
Bienvenue dans le Nouveau Monde, Comment j’ai survécu à la coolitude des startups, Mathilde Ramadier
Les start-up expliquées à ma fille, L’entrepreneuriat vu de l’intérieur, Guillene Ribière
Startup, Arrêtons la mascarade, Contribuer vraiment à l’économie de demain, Nicolas Menet, Benjamin Zimmer
No Exit, Struggling to Survive a Modern Gold Rush, Gideon Lewis-Kraus
The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Building a Business When There are no Easy Answers, Ben Horowitz
Zero to One, Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
Startupland, How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business, Mikkel Svane, Carlye Adler
European Founders at Work, Pedro Gairifo Santos
Founders at Work, Stories of Startups’ Early Days, Jessica Livingston
The Monk and the Riddle, The Education of a Silicon Valley Entrepreneur, Randy Komisar
Once you’re lucky, Twice you’re good, The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web, Sarah Lacy
They Made It! Angelika Blendstrup
Betting It All, The Entrepreneurs of Technology, Michael Malone,
In the Company of Giants, Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World, Rama Dev Jager, Rafael Ortiz
Startup, A Silicon Valley Adventure, Jerry Kaplan

Ecosystems and Innovation

From the Basement to the Dome, How MIT’s Unique Culture Created a Thriving Entrepreneurial Community, Jean-Jacques Degroof
The Microchip Revolution: A brief history, Luc O. Bauer, E. Marshall Wilder
The Code, Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, Margaret O’Mara
Loonshots or how to nurture crazy ideas, Safi Bahcall
Troublemakers, How Generation of Silicon Valley Upstarts Invented the Future, Leslie Berlin
The Rainforest, The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley, Victor W. Hwang, Greg Horowitt
The Innovators, How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution, Walter Isaacson
The Entrepreneurial State, Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths, Mariana Mazzucato
Genentech, The Beginnings of Biotech, Sally Smith Hughes
Science Lessons, What the Business of Biotech Taught Me About Management, Gordon Binder
Le prochain Google sera Suisse (à 10 conditions), Fathi Derder
Prophet of Innovation, Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction, Thomas McCraw
Start-up Nation, The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, Dan Senor, Saul Singer
Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed–and What to Do About It, Josh Lerner
The Innovation Illusion, How So Little is Created by So Many Working So Hard, Fredrik Erixon, Bjorn Weige
Un paléoanthropologue dans l’entreprise, S’adapter et innover pour survivre, Pascal Picq
Against Intellectual Monopoly, Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine
The New Argonauts, Regional Advantage in a Global Economy, AnnaLee Saxenian
Regional Advantage, Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, AnnaLee Saxenian
Silicon Valley Fever, Growth of High Technology Culture, Everett M. Rogers, Judith K. Larsen
Creating the Cold War University, The Transformation of Stanford, Rebecca S. Lowen
Nurturing Science-based Ventures, An International Case Perspective, Ralf Seifert, Benoït Leleux, Christopher Tucci
Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Peter F. Drucker
The Gorilla Game, Picking Winners in High Technology, Geoffrey Moore
Inside the Tornado, Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets, Geoffrey Moore
Crossing the Chasm, Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers, Geoffrey Moore
The Founder’s Dilemmas, Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, Noam Wasserman
The Innovators Dilemma, When New Technologies Cause Good Firms To Fail, Clayton M. Christensen
Accidental Empires, How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date, Robert X. Cringley

Venture Capital

The Power Law, Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future, Sebastian Mallaby
The Masters of Private Equity and Venture Capital, Management Lessons from the Pioneers of Private Investing, Robert A. Finkel
The Startup Game, Inside the Partnership between Venture Capitalists and Entrepreneurs, William H. Draper III
Creative Capital, Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital, Spencer Ante
The Business of Venture Capital, Insights from Leading Practitioners on the Art of Raising a Fund, Deal Structuring, Value Creation, and Exit Strategies, Mahendra Ramsinghani
The New Venturers, Inside the High-Stakes World of Venture Capital, John Wilson

How To

The Mom Test, How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you, Rob Fitzpatrick
Straight Talk for Startups, 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds, Randy Komisar, Jantoon Reigersman
Measure What Matters, OKRs, The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth, John Doerr,
The start-up of You, Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career, Reid Hoffman
Don’t f**k it up, How Founders and Their Successors Can Avoid the Clichés That Inhibit Growth, Les Trachtman
How To Start a Business That Doesn’t Suck (and will actually turn a profit), Michael Clarke
The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Successful Strategies for Products That Win, Steve Blank (NB: the book has been updated and renamed as The Startup Owner’s Manual, The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, Steve Blank, Bob Dorf)
The Lean Startup, How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries
Business Model Generation, Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
Slicing Pie, Funding Your Company Without Funds, Mike Moyer
Getting to Plan B, Breaking Through to a Better Business Model, John Mullins, Randy Komisar
Winning Opportunities, Proven Tools for Converting Your Projects into Success (without a Business Plan), Raphael Cohen
Start-up, (anti-)bible à l’usage des fous et des futurs entrepreneurs, Bruno Martinaud
The Art of the Start, GuyKawasaki

Fiction / Thrillers or close

Drop by Drop, Keith Raffel
Smasher, a Silicon Valley Mystery, Keith Raffel
dead, a Silicon Valley Mystery, Keith Raffel
The Ultimate Cure, Peter Harboe-Schmidt
The First $20 Million Is Always The Hardest, Po Bronson
The Nudist on the Late Shift, And Other True Tales of Silicon Valley, Po Bronson

A MIT entrepreneurial history – Epilogue : The Impact and some lessons learnt

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Degroof has produced one of the best books describing entrepreneurial ecosystems as I have already mentioned in 2 previous posts including Part 2 : Ecosystems & Culture.
In the last part of his book, he switches to the impact of MIT and its ecosystem.

This is a well-known topic as you could read in Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT. Degroof reminds us (pages 183-89) of the biotech startups around Kendall Square (Biogen, Genzyme) as well as the R&D of big pharma relocating around, such as Swiss Novartis. It’s not only about biotech as Lotus Development or Akamai exemplify. He also mentions some alumni who became famous entrepreneurs or investors, Hewlett (36), Perkins (53) or Swanson (69). He does not mention Noyce (53) though, and his tinkerings (more here and there) or Haren (80) for French people. There could be hundreds of others!

He also adds about the impact of local accelerators from CIC in the late 90s to MassChallenge and TechStars. I am a little less convinced about the international impact MIT had in a more topdown institutional way. What is the exact outcome of partnerships in Singapore, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Spain or Portugal. The Deshpande Center certainly inspired many initiatives including the Innogrants I managed at EPFL in the mid 2000s or even what I do today.

Degroof also develops the importance of teaching and training: “In trying to reconcile the tension between rigor and relevance, Aulet argues convincingly that entrepreneurship should be framed as a craft as opposed to a science or an art. Like a craft, it is built on fundamental concepts. A potter, for instance, needs to master the basic mechanical and chemical principles of his craft. Knowing those does not guarantee success, but they considerably improve the chances. Like a craft, entrepreneurship is best learned through apprenticeship, or learning by doing, rather than relying only on lectures or manuals.” [Page 212]

Again I am a little less convinced about this generally-mentioned point: “There is a strong belief at MIT that entrepreneurship is a team sport. It is based on the evidence that teams of founders tend to perform better than individual founders, and that complementary teams tend to do better than homogeneous teams. Following on the heels of the I-Teams class, nowadays, most teams in entrepreneurship-related courses or contests are required to be composed of a mix of engineering or science students with management students. This has become an important feature and a great strength of entrepreneurship training at MIT. Both groups benefit from each other’s contributions. Engineering and science students discover the market dimensions of the projects with the help of their peers from the business school and learn that it is not enough to build a better mousetrap, while the latter benefit from scientific and engineering insights. Both groups are forced to deal with cultural differences and with more complex team dynamics than what occurs in homogeneous teams. The results are stronger teams and more effective projects.” [Page 214]

Entrepreneurship is a complex venture and entrepreneurial ecosystems are complex and fragile settings. Degroof convincingly describes why Boston has become a model. He does not really develop why it has not been as succesful as Silicon Valley, with a similar culture though. Paul Graham’s Ycombinator had moved from Boston to Silicon Valley as mentioned in Why Boston Should Worry. When I visited Novartis people in Boston, some claimed that Silicon Valley was to Boston what Boston was to Europe. Yes, Boston was more innovative than Europe and that is why Novartis moved some R&D to the West, but when Novartis bought Chiron in Silicon Valley, Novartis discovered going further West was again more adventurous. (See Myths and Realities of Innovation in Switzerland).

But these debates are secondary to the lessons learnt and synthesized by Degroof. A lot of inspiration is to be found. And coming back to the great foreword by Metcalfe : recreating MIT’s renowned entrepreneurial ecosystem is not a simple task. There is no copying MIT’s ecosystem and pasting it into another institution. The founding principles and unique cultural elements that came together to create the “secret sauce,” as Jean-Jacques calls it, the ground-up nature of what has grown and thrived at MIT, are not easy to duplicate. That does not mean that there are no concrete lessons to be learned, that there is not knowledge that can be translated and adapted for other universities and economies. Today, as a successful and seasoned entrepreneur, I still frequently look to MIT in my efforts to build a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem at the University of Texas. I don’t hesitate to reach out to my extensive network at MIT for answers to questions of theory and practice. From there, I have been able to make great strides in my goal. I may not be recreating MIT, but I am modeling what I do after the very best and adapting it to the specifics I have here in Austin.”

The Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt (Part IV) – Venture Capital

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After my initial notes (part I), the importance of culture (part II), the recipe (part III) in the Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt, here are my final notes about venture capital. It may indeed be their best chapter, even if the topic has produced probably hundreds of books and thousands of articles… Their (apparent) bias as venture capitalists is only apparent. Their description is close to what I experienced but I may be biased too!

The subtitle of the chapter is “Big V, Little C” and their quote to begin the chapter is “if you want to make money, do private equity. If you want to have fun, do venture capital”. They then borrow to AnnaLee Saxenian: “In Boston it was the entrepreneurs who dressed nicely and showed up on time to impress the investors. In Silicon Valley it was the opposite.” […] “In other words, the venture – that is the startup – is always more important than the capital, with a Big V and a Little C.” [Pages 218-21]

They explain why investing in the seed and early stage is costly for venture capitalists. “It’s better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. […] Investing earlier in a deal must be counter-balanced by a strong potential of a massively disproportionate payout at the end. Otherwise, it is simply not worth the risk. […] Lowered transaction costs due to trust and social norms make high-risk seed-stage and early-stage venture capital more profitable [in Silicon Valley].” [Pages 228-29]

In other areas, subsidized capital plays a role. But it does not mean VC should not be understood: “There are two ways to build a venture fund. One takes as little as thirty minutes to learn. The other can take twenty years or more. The short course is to learn the formal legal structuring and financial processes of a typical venture fund. […] the more difficult and time-consuming course is to learn the human behavioral dynamics that happen in and around venture funds. […] Questions such as:
– how do you treat others in situations where mistakes and failures happen almost daily?
– how to build a reputation for trust, candor and integrity when millions of dollars are at stake?
– what type of value can you provide an entrepreneur who probably knows far more about the business than you do?
– how do you actively listen to an entrepreneur, and then see beyond their words to the true prospects of a company?
– how do you know when a CEO is not fit to run a company anymore?
– how do you help a tiny company build life-or-death relationships with huge, powerful customers or strategic partners?”
It reminds me what I learnt 20 years ago: it takes 5 years and $10M to make an investor.

The authors conclude their chapter with marvelous documentary SomethingVentured: “[VCs]’re working really hard, they’re very bright, they’re working together, and they’re collaborating. And there’s a lot of fun involved in achieving things together as a group. So I don’t think you can underestimate how much fun the people… had doing what they did. I think they’re extremely proud, but when they talk about these stories, they’re laughing, they’re smiling. There’s just this excitement and energy about building something.” [Page 242]

The Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt (Part III) – the Recipe

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After my initial notes (part I) and the importance of culture (part II) in the Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt, here are my new notes about their recipe to build efficient ecosystems for entrepreneurial innovation. I will finish with a part IV about venture capital.

Again the authors remind us that “innovation is chaotic, serendipitous and uncontrollable, so processes that are linear and controlled are rarely self-sustaining. In contrast, what we strive for in a Rainforest is a system that yields immense impact, is low-cost, and generates internal sustainability. The only possible way to achieve these goals is to build a community of innovators where transaction costs have been reduced through the creation of trust, social norms, connectivity and diversity.” [Page 183]

So their recipe is not so much a recipe as a cure. In fact they say “rather than thinking like macroeconomists, to change behavior, we must think like psychiatrists […] We build rainforests by shaping the outward behavior of innovators. Over time, those behaviors can create changes in attitude, and eventually, the changes in attitude can lead to change in beliefs”. [Page 200-1]

In the recipe [pages 194-200], there is Hardware made of 4 “P”s: People, Professional, (i.e. institutions), Physical (i.e. infrastructure) and Policy. Hardware is necessary but not sufficient. There is also Software, with 5 pillars, Diversity, Extra-Rational Motivations, Social Trust, Rules (see my previous post) and Interpretation of the Rules. The Keystones will make all this possible.

The Rainforest canvas may be a helpful tool to assess the situation of an ecosystem in its physical and cultural components:

About Role Models, they have the interesting Porsche principle. “This principle holds that one of the greatest motivators for professors or graduate students on campus to start new companies is when one of their colleagues drives up in a new Porsche after selling their startup”. [Page 210] To be honest, today, at EPFL and probably elsewhere, I would call it the Tesla principle… (see my previous post…The University-based Startup Porsche Principle. Or is it the Tesla Principle?)

In their epilogue, the authors explain that “Perhaps, instead of fighting the chaos, we need to become more comfortable with it. Perhaps we just need a better map. The Rules of the Rainforest provide a useful map – one that shows the way to balance the freedom of chaos with the beauty of collaboration. […] It requires a ‘joyful participation’ in the ups and downs, the mistakes and the failures that are inevitable. Thus, love is like a solution to chaos. ” [page 280] They use a magnificent quotation from Richard Feynman to whom a student asked to write a message to his mother so that she would be interested in science. Here it is: “Tell your son to stop trying to fill your head with science – for to fill your hear with love is enough. Richard Feynman (the man you watched on BBC ‘Horizon'”.

Here is a slideshare presentation by the authors, which beautifully summarizes their vision.

The Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt. Part 2: the Importance of Culture

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After my introductory post about The Rainforest – The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt, which focused on the importance of trust, here is a second piece about culture. The final part will describe how the authors claim they know the recipe to build rainforests. What is remarkable with the Rainforest is the ambition to explain that innovation is mostly cultural so that at the micro-level it cannot really be engineered, but at the macro-level rainforests can be built. I am not sure the authors are right, but the effort is really to be recognized.

One lesson of the Rainforest is that outcomes cannot be engineered. […] Serendipity itself cannot be engineered but an environment that is conducive to serendipity can be. [Page 65]

In their chapter 3 about People, they begin with Keystones, not Entrepreneurs. “What defines a Keystone? Over the years, we have observed certain individuals practicing a unique manner of human interaction that is critical to the growth of entrepreneurial innovation. […] These people are usually missing, or at least too scarce, in almost all regions that have failed at generating significant amounts of entrepreneurial innovation.” [Page 71]

These people are integrative, influential and impactful, they are brokers of social trust (by contrast to entrepreneurs who are people who absorb information, learn from practice and seek opportunities). “The San Francisco Bay Area has a vastly higher percentage of people who are involved in multiple firms. 4.5% of the actors counted in the Bay Area were involved in three or more startups, compared to 2.9% in Boston, 2% in San Diego, […] 1.2% in Austin […] 0.7% in Portland. […] The bay Area has a significantly higher share of individuals who are extremely connected and contribute to the growth of multiple startup ventures”. [Page 74]

The authors also show the diversity of psychologies, the diversity of backgrounds in people which are still connected and work together. “We see these unconscious behaviors at work with innovators everywhere in the world. Scientists versus entrepreneurs. Startups versus large corporations. Investors versus investees. These tribal conflicts can be obstacles to the development of Rainforests.” [Page 109] All the more that: “Similarly the process of building a startup company is one in which people must often rely on gut-level decision-making. Entrepreneurial innovation, by its nature, is virtually a never-ending series of educated guesses. Almost every decision is based substantially incomplete information.” [Page 106]

America is the building of a society not burdened by historical tribes. […] They are less chained to the past. Instead Americans tend to be identified by self-reliance. […] People still run to California today. It is commonly regarded as the land of pioneers, nonconformists, artists, and rebels. [Page 116] Culture is critical to the way economic systems function because it provides the rules of engagement between people that hopefully can maximize their collective well-being. [Page 118] The authors are not naïve but claim that all these people need to find the right balance. A venture capitalist is caught between trying to own as much of a company as possible and trying to leave enough equity in the hands of the entrepreneurial team to keep them fully incentivized. […] A VC wants to preserve a reputation. [Page 119] Innovative behavior is not driven by rational maximization. There are in fact other forces, which can be called extra-rational: competition, altruism, adventure, discovery, creativity, meaning, concern.

Here I cannot avoid mentioning the great (counter-)example of Orson Welles about the Scorpio and the Turtle… Hopefully nature is not everything, culture matters.

One mistake of policy makers is to underestimate these extra-rational motivations. “Governments and corporations often try to incentivize innovation by focusing on financial mechanisms, such as tax breaks, subsidies, grants and loans. But overall, this strategy has been poor. They cannot be only the ends in themselves.” [Page 127]

Traditional incentives, benefits and costs: [Page 124]
Benefits:
Some possibility of making more money
Costs
Sacrifice a stable income and career perhaps forever
Risk social disapproval from family, friends, potential spouses
Difficulty and fear of working with strangers outside conventional circles of trust, culture, ethnicity, language
Difficulty and extra effort in communicating effectively
Huge investment of time, effort, stress
Possibility of losing everything (depending on laws, regarding bankruptcy, partnerships, etc.)

Rainforest incentives, benefits and costs: [Page 126]
Benefits:
Perceived and possibly real opportunity of making more money (following role models that have validated the path already)
Joy of discovery, novelty, adventure, creativity, passion
Social approval (as a peer member of a community of innovators)
Joy of friendship, sharing, love working on a team, building new trust, common values and goals
Fulfillment from the possibility of making a difference in society, leaving a legacy for future generations
Thrill of competition
Freedom and independence
Costs
Little social punishment, often encouragement, from family and friends for taking a worthwhile risk
Some anxiety from meeting new people, but offset by the joy of making new friendships
Huge investment of time, effort, and stress, but viewed in a neutral or even positive light because pursuing a personal passion
Little risk of losing everything because new opportunities emerge in the process of experimentation
Much lower probability of failure from a broad community of fellow innovators.

And the authors claim what are needed are 7 rules [Page 156]:
– Break the rules and dream
– Open doors and listen
– Trust and be trusted
– Experiment and iterate together
– Seek fairness, not advantage.
– Err, fail and persist.
– Pay it forward.

People usually think of Silicon Valley as an anomaly in the otherwise “normal” history of the world, but what if we reversed that proposition? What if we envisioned Silicon Valley as the natural endpoint of a 50,000-year story? Perhaps it could be the latest stage in the evolution of human society, from a culture based on tribes to a culture based on pragmatic individuals. [page 152]

Look at Harari again if you have not not already…

Notes on the Rainforest by Hwang and Horowitt

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I must thank here first Bogdan Ceobanu from the European Commission. After spending a few hours discussing the challenges (and opportunities) of innovation in Europe, he sent me his copy of The Rainforest – The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt. Bogdan is one of the leading voices behind Startup Europe. Thanks 🙂

There may be nothing really new in this book about ecosystems, but the messages are strong and clear. You may need an infrastructure, but without culture, nothing will happen, no innovation will emerge. I might write a few posts about this book as I just began reading it recently. And as usual, here are my notes / extracts.

Despite hundreds of books and thousands of papers on the subject, real-world innovation is little understood. […] Having the right ingredients will not necessarily result in successful innovation. You need to prepare those raw ingredients, combining them in just the right way. […] We argue that the two pillars of innovation’s conventional wisdom – free markets and clusters – are unable to provide comprehensive answers to the mystery of systemic innovation. [Pages 18-20]

Funnily enough, I gave my own recipe in 2007: “Two main ingredients are needed, rich people and nerds; this has been said already. Do not add any bureaucracy, do not add concrete. In order to attract and keep enough nerds, there is a need for a large and nice plate. A university is a good choice. But it must not be a university like any other; it must be a superb university. There are some; a few are being built from scratch. It needs a unique personality, and it needs to be creative. Not only on its campus, but also in its surroundings, so that the ingredients feel comfortable in the plate. They should be fresh, i.e. they should be young and dynamic. Young and dynamic people are the founders of start-ups. Graham also mentions liberal environments, which, he claims, tolerate strange and brilliant individuals. Then the ingredients have to be put in the oven for a very long time. Silicon Valley began in 1957, Silicon Fen in 1960. It took ten years, maybe even twenty years, to make these two regions successful; it is about the time it takes to grow infants into adults. The oven should not be too hot, so that the desire is not killed, then the temperature should be increased to maintain the enthusiasm. A temperate, pleasant climate is therefore necessary. If all the conditions are in place, the result will probably be interesting”. [Page 176. Start-Up: What We May Still Learn From Silicon Valley]

The world of innovation does not happen at the macro-level. Innovation is a “body contact sport.” It is a micro-level phenomenon. When applied to innovation, rational choice theory might make sense if you’re a theorist thinking abstractly about the way the world should work. It does not accurately describe the way the world actually works. [Page 37] You cannot understand the macro without understanding the micro. […] the world is far more complicated – one must deal with a range of complex social and psychological factors, personal networks, and information flows. [Page 48]

Free market proponents sometimes support investments in scientific research as a way to stimulate new innovation. […] Scientific research, however, does not always lead to economic growth. Each $1 increase in scientific research does not necessarily result in a $1 increase in economic activity in the overall system. The research alone is not sufficient. […] In the real world, the path from discovery to commercial product is so long, tortuous, and serendipitous that the vast majority of world-changing technologies never see the light of day. Society has a surprisingly huge backlog of scientific discoveries that are “stuck in the pipeline”, stalled by the human barriers that prevent them from reaching the marketplace. [Page 40]

For instance, the state of Kansas actively invested in its high-tech entrepreneurs. The University of Kansas provided research grants to develop products for commercial application. The university promoted regional collaboration, entrepreneurial training and even direct assistance. The results of these endeavors, however, were nothing like those of Silicon Valley. And the vast majority of the world looks a lot more like Kansas than California. [Page 41] A cluster is a description of a phenomenon, not a prescription for policy. [Page 42]

Whereas a company is a group of individuals working together, a cluster is a region of individuals or companies working together. In both cases, these relationships result in lower transaction costs. And in both cases, those savings are derived from the fact that people are closer together, can communicate more easily, and trust each other more. [Page 46]

And again let me give you an extract from my book, now quoting Richard Newton: “The Bay Area is the Corporation. […When people change jobs here in the BayArea], they’re actually just moving among the various divisions of the Bay Area Corporation.” [Page 102 – Start-up]

I am not sure anyone has “The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley”, but I will post more when I am more advanced in reading the Rainforest!

A remarkable analysis of European weaknesses: the acquisition of Withings according to François Nemo

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Sometimes I make a copy/paste of articles that I have particularly appreciated, with the objective of then translating them to English from the French part of this blog. (Sorry for the bad English, this is pretty quick and dirty). Here I will add my own comments in brackets and italics. You can find the original article and the comments on Frenchweb.fr.

Withings or the story of a French naivety
François Nemo expert in disruptive strategies.

The spectacular acquisition of Withings by Nokia does not illustrate as it is always argued the weakness of our financing system but the lack of vision and commitment of our entrepreneurial scene. It shows our failure in creating an ecosystem with the right scale to position ourselves in the digital war against China and the United States. It is time to mobilize our energies to “beat the GAFA” and defend our sovereignty.

[For years, I have been saying that we do not have so much a funding problem, but a problem of culture, a complete misunderstanding of the importance of start-ups and their growth.]

After Captain Train bought by the British for €200M, it is now an emblem of the French technology, Withings – which made the buzz at CES in Las Vegas by playing the “made in France” card, – to be bought by Nokia to €170M. And I am ready to bet that Blalacar would not withstand a proposal from Facebook if it decided to introduce carpooling in its range of services to connect the planet. The adventure of the so-called French jewels has unfortunately only one outcome: a big check!

[I will let you browse my documents on Slideshare and especially the one that compares Europe and Silicon Valley and its slide 37]

Intelligence First

As technology develops, the more it disappears behind the ideas. The “purpose” or the “raison d’être”. The big digital players have understood this by turning to “intelligence first.” The product is a feature that is integrated in a platform whose role is to solve the world’s problems, health, travel, leisure … manage a community, organize a circular, iterative, open and inclusive ecosystem that connects direct users and producers to shorten and optimize the interaction. This is the announced death of sites and applications. The role of the entrepreneur is then to defend a “vision” and then to design the system to match it. He is a conductor more than a resource creator who will defend the key assets of the company; ideas and data. In this new context, mono-products like Withings companies have no chance to grow if not to integrate an ecosystem. One can also wonder about the real benefits for Whitings of being acquired by Nokia? Dropbox or Evernote had bitter experiences in yielding to the striking power of large platforms. And what about the relevance of that phrase of Steve Job: “You are a feature, not a product” by refusing to buy Dropbox ten years ago?

The new war of ecosystems

This is on the field of ecosystems that now compete the two giants of the digital world, the United States with GAFA, underpinned by an ideology, and China with more pragmatic companies like Alibaba, WeChat who developed new ecosystems in booming sectors by creating new business models and which after reaching an impressive number of users on their domestic market are beginning to position themselves internationally by triggering a fierce fight with the Americans. It is in this context that the GAFA (mostly) do their “market” in the four corners of the planet to feed and enrich their ecosystem. And France with the quality of its research and its dynamic start-ups is a particularly attractive hunting ground.

Why Europe is not able to create worldwide ecosystems?

The acquisition Withings is not as it is claimed a financing problem, an inadequate investment European ecosystem that would prevent a rapid scale-up of our jewels. The scope of Withings whatever the funds injected made impossible anyway a development outside of any platform. The question is why Europe is not able to create worldwide ecosystems in which promisng start-ups like Withings find their place?

[The failure of the European Union is not political only. There is also economic failure. So much fragmentation and so much national selfishness …].

We do not think digital at the right scale!

Our speech about the “Made in France”, staged around our digital champions and their presence at CES supported by the Minister of Economy himself is something naive and pathetic. All the institutional and private infrastructure, accelerators, think tanks, French tech, CNNum, Ecole 42, The Family, accelerator or NUMA, to name only the most prominent are not programmed to develop platforms with visions but products and features or laws and reports. This is our economic and entrepreneurial culture that is in question. A world still very marked by the culture of the engineer and the specialist. A world that is unfamiliar with and remains wary of notions of vision and commitment and more generally to the world of ideas. Rather conservative entrepreneurs who do not perceive the deeply subversive nature of the digital revolution and the need to change the “scale of thinking.”

Large groups who all have a start-up potential

We could also rely on large established groups who all have a start-up potential just like the American Goldman Sachs saying: “We are no longer a bank, but a technology company, we are the Google of finance” by having three thousand five hundred people working on the subject and by announcing a series of measures such as giving access to market and risk management data as open source. One can easily imagine corporations like La Poste and Groupama which business will be radically challenged in the next five years preparing for the future by organizing an ecosystem around wellness and healthcare (for example) that would integrate their know-how with Withings. But listening to the representatives of the major groups, Pierre Gattaz or Carlos Ghosn, for example, one quickly perceives their shortsightedness and lack of interest (they have nothing to gain) for disruptive strategies.

[Which role models or mentors could have our young generations in Europe, not only in France, at the end of their studies? How could they build GAFAs when the model is today the CAC40 and a very engineering culture, indeed].

Are we ready to live in an ” Fisher Price Internet”

Are we doomed to become satellites, and lose our economic sovereignty and security by staying under the influence of GAFA. Or as proposed François Candelon, Senior Manager at the Boston Consulting Group in a very good article “look at what China can teach and bring” and “create a Digital Silk Road”. Are we doomed to choose between Scylla and Charybdis? No! Because even if the web giants with their vision paved the way to new relationships by building the most disruptive companies in history, they leave us facing a huge gap. The “technical transformation of the individual.” Are we ready to live in an ” Fisher Price Internet” as Viuz claimed “in closed houses” run by machines “with chubby groves, manicured lawns and paved roads” where exclusivity, premium and scarcity matter leaving out of the door a part of the population. A kind of ultra-secure retirement homes for the wealthy?

Breaking the GAFA

We must unhesitatingly rush into a third track: “Breaking the GAFA”. If the formula is somewhat provocative, it encourages mobilization. The gap will be difficult to catch up, but it is time for Europe to build on its historical and fundamental values to build new ecosystems and enter fully into the economic war between the two major blocs. Propose alternatives to GAFA. “Use algorithms and artificial intelligence to create an augmented intelligence and solve the complex problems that the ecological and social emergency create” as said Yann Moulier Boutang. Integrate new technologies to rebalance the power relationships, find the keys to a true economy of sharing and knowledge to tackle the question of the future of work, compensation, health, freedom, education …

To scale

A rupture that requires a change of scale by challenging our economic culture and our understanding of the world. A rupture which, even if it still faces a “diabolical” inertia, has become a necessity for many of us.

If you are part of this new “generation” of “intelligence first”, if you have ideas and solutions to change our scale of reflection, I invite you to join us on Twitter or email @ifbranding f.nemo@ifbranding.fr together, we have solutions to propose and build projects.

The author
François Nemo expert in disruptive strategies.
Website: ifbranding.fr
Twitter: @ifbranding
Medium: @ifbranding

How to become a hub for startups?

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This is the subject that “génialissime” Paul Graham addresses in the speech How to Make Pittsburgh a Startup Hub, a speech he has just published on his blog. I say “génialissime” because every time I read him, I am excited by the simplicity of his messages even if often counter-intuitive. Thus in How to be Silicon Valley?, he said “Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it’s full of rich people, it has few nerds. It’s not the kind of place nerds like. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people.” Yet he returned to Pittsburgh to give his recipe, at least paths to become a hub for start-ups.

Image borrowed from Zak Slayback

Here are some excerpts that show that everything is cultural so that a city or a university should have above all a friendly and liberal, not to say laissez-faire attitude. “And it’s not as if you have to make painful sacrifices in the meantime. Think about what I’ve suggested you should do. Encourage local restaurants, save old buildings, take advantage of density, make CMU the best, promote tolerance. These are the things that make Pittsburgh good to live in now. All I’m saying is that you should do even more of them.”

And about universities, he adds: “What can CMU do to help Pittsburgh become a startup hub? Be an even better research university. […] Being that kind of talent magnet is the most important contribution universities can make toward making their city a startup hub. In fact it is practically the only contribution they can make. But wait, shouldn’t universities be setting up programs with words like “innovation” and “entrepreneurship” in their names? No, they should not. These kind of things almost always turn out to be disappointments. They’re pursuing the wrong targets. […] And the way to learn about entrepreneurship is to do it, which you can’t in school. I know it may disappoint some administrators to hear that the best thing a university can do to encourage startups is to be a great university. It’s like telling people who want to lose weight that the way to do it is to eat less. […] Universities are great at bringing together founders, but beyond that the best thing they can do is get out of the way. For example, by not claiming ownership of “intellectual property” that students and faculty develop, and by having liberal rules about deferred admission and leaves of absence. […] But if a university really wanted to help its students start startups, the empirical evidence […] suggests the best thing they can do is literally nothing.”

And now a diggression. This article reminded me of the text of another genius of Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs. “[There are] two or three reasons. You have to go back a little in history. I mean this is where the beatnik happened in San Francisco. It is a pretty interesting thing. This is where the hippy movement happened. This is the only place in America where Rock‘n’roll really happened. Right? Most of the bands in this country, Bob Dylan in the 60’s, I mean they all came out of here. I think of Joan Baez to Jefferson Airplane to the Grateful Dead. Everything came out of here, Janis Joplin, Jimmy Hendrix, everybody. Why is that? You’ve also had Stanford and Berkeley, two awesome universities drawing smart people from all over the world and depositing them in this clean, sunny, nice place where there’s a whole bunch of other smart people and pretty good food. And at times a lot of drugs and all of that. So they stayed. There’s a lot of human capital pouring in. Really smart people. People seem pretty bright here relative to the rest of the country. People seem pretty open-minded here relative to the rest of the country. I think it’s just a very unique place and it’s got a track record to prove it and that tends to attract more people. I give a lot of credit to the universities, probably the most credit of anything to Stanford and Berkeley.”

Paul Graham’s latest contribution is a must read. As usual, it is long, provocative, disturbing and totally convincing…

What makes an entrepreneurial ecosystem by Nicolas Colin

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Great analysis by Nicolas Colin (The Family) in his article What makes an entrepreneurial ecosystem? If the topic interests you, it is a must-read.

in a nutshell, the entrepreneurial ecosystems need 3 ingredients – I quote:
– capital: by definition, no new business can be launched without money and relevant infrastructures (which consist of capital tied up in tangible assets);
– know-how: you need engineers, developers, designers, salespeople: all those whose skills are necessary for launching and growing innovative businesses;
– rebellion: an entrepreneur always challenges the status quo. If they wanted to play by the book, they would innovate within big, established companies, where they would be better paid and would have access to more resources.

This reminds me of two “recipes” I often mention. First the “5 needed ingredients of tech. clusters”
1. Universities and research centers of a very high caliber;
2. An industry of venture capital (i.e. financial institutions and private investors);
3. Experienced professionals in high tech;
4. Service providers such as lawyers, head hunters, public relations and marketing specialists, auditors, etc.
5. Last but not least, an intangible yet critical component: a pioneering spirit which encourages an entrepreneurial culture.
in “Understanding Silicon Valley, the Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region”, by M. Kenney, more precisely in chapter: “A Flexible Recycling” by S. Evans and H. Bahrami

Second, Paul Graham in How to be Silicon Valley? “Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it’s full of rich people, it has few nerds. It’s not the kind of place nerds like. Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people.” He also added about failed ecosystems: “I read occasionally about attempts to set up “technology parks” in other places, as if the active ingredient of Silicon Valley were the office space. An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. Don’t the French realize these aren’t startups?”

Many toxic friends of entrepreneurial ecosystems have not understood this. But for those who have understood, building lively ecosystems remains a real challenge: bringing the rebellion, the culture, diminishing the fear of risk taking without stigmatizing (not rewarding– here I disagree with Colin) failure remains highly challenging whereas finding know-how and capital is not easy but feasible with some hard work…

Finally, I copy his diagrams which show ideal and less ideal combinations of capital, know-how and rebellion, adding my exercise for Switzerland.

Switzerland is probably 80% Germany and 20% France…

(A short addition on Oct 29, 2015) – The best description of Switzerland was given by Orson Welles. It explains a lot of things…

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace – and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.” in The Third Man, said by Holly Martins to Harry Lime.

How do you measure your entrepreneurial ecosystem?

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The title of this post is the first sentence of the report published by the Kauffman foundation entitled Measuring an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. And it is a critical question. For years, universities, cities, regions, countries try to assess if they are innovative and entrepreneurial enough. And unfortunately, this is often measured through inputs and not outputs. Sometimes for good reasons, because stakeholders can offer favorable conditions but in the end entrepreneurs perform and stakeholders help but do not act…

The Kauffman foundation is proposing a set of metrics to help in assessing your ecosystem. It is an ambitious proposal as these are not easy to obtain, but they look very interesting and I thought it would be worth describing them here. They are classified in 4 topics:

DENSITY

1- Number of new and young companies per 1,000 people,
where “young” can mean less than five or ten years old. This will tell you, in the most basic way, how the level of entrepreneurship changes over time relative to population.

2- Share of employment accounted for by new and young companies.
Entrepreneurial vibrancy should not just be measured by the number of companies — it also should include all the people involved in those companies. This will capture founders and employees.

3- Density of new and young companies in terms of specific sectors.
Some places already may have a particular economic sector that has been identified as the centerpiece of an ecosystem, such as “creative” industries or manufacturing. Again using population as a denominator.

FLUIDITY

4- Population flux, or individuals moving between cities or regions.
Entrepreneurial vibrancy means people both coming and going. From an ecosystem perspective, this means that the entrepreneurial environment must be fluid to enable entrepreneurs to engage. The obverse, of course, is that limits on fluidity will suppress entrepreneurial vibrancy.

5- Population flux within a given region.
Individuals also need to be able to find the right match with different jobs within a region. The pace at which they are able to move from job to job and between organizations should be an important indicator of vibrancy.

6- The number (and density) of high-growth firms,
which are responsible for a disproportionate share of job creation and innovation. A concentration of high-growth firms will indicate whether or not entrepreneurs are able to allocate resources to more productive uses. Importantly, high growth is not necessarily synonymous with high tech.

CONNECTIVITY

7- Connectivity with respect to programs, or resources, for entrepreneurs.
A vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem is not simply a collection of isolated elements — the connections between the elements matter just as much as the elements themselves. The diversity of your entrepreneurial population is likely to be high, and a one-stop shop for serving entrepreneurs is unlikely to do much good in serving all of them. Entrepreneurs move through an ecosystem, piecing together knowledge and assistance from different sources, and the connectivity of supporting organizations should help underpin the development of a strong entrepreneurial network.

8- Spinoff rate.
The entrepreneurial “genealogy” of a given region, as measured by links between entrepreneurs and existing companies, is an important indicator of sustained vibrancy.

9- “Dealmaker” network
Individuals with valuable social capital, who have deep fiduciary ties within regional economies and act in the role of mediating relationships, making connections and facilitating new firm formation play a critical role in a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.

DIVERSITY

10-Economic diversification,
an important concept because no city or region should be overly reliant on one particular industry. At a country level, research has shown that economic complexity is correlated with growth and innovation.

11- Attraction and assimilation of immigrants.
Historically, immigrants have a very high entrepreneurial propensity.

12- Economic mobility,
i.e. the probability of moving up or down the economic ladder between different income quintiles. The purpose is to improve the quality of life for your citizens, to expand opportunity, and to create a virtuous circle of opportunity, growth, and prosperity.