Are you ready to change the world?

I have been reading daily about Silicon Valley ecosystem for over a decade. Before the bubble burst, I used to read with envy success stories from garage entrepreneurs and Stanford graduates founding start-ups. I follow several blogs from well-known VCs, serial entrepreneurs, reputed developers and technology journalists from San Francisco area and the valley. In some sense I am more up-to-date with the Valley's life than with Spain's political affairs, although I've never put a foot in California, not even in the United States.

I am telling you this because yesterday I went to an event of Global Business Trip in Madrid that aims to be a facilitator for spanish technology companies in their way to the valley ecosystem. The project, hosted by Fundación Banesto Sociedad y Tecnología, and with the collaboration of ICEX, apparently is doing a great job trying to change spanish companies' endemic traditional lack of global ambition. I went to the event curious to know if at last there is an emergent ecosystem of real tech entrepreneurs in Spain, and I hadn't noticed. Unfortunately few minutes after my arrival I discovered that there isn't and that it will not happen some time soon.

On the bright side, and despite the naive way of thinking (and asking) of some entrepreneurs there, I got quite interesting takeaways. Specially from Carlos Barrabés (who really surprised me) and Bernardo Hernández, our most famous Googler and who seems really involved in contributing to Spain's technology internationalization

First of all, our country needs lots of new entrepreneurs if we want to really change the grounds of our economy. And we also need our companies to grow if we want to compare ourselves to other developed countries. Spain needs several thousand new medium-sized companies, and less micro-SMEs that are closer to self-employment than to a company. This change will take time and Government should take steps to empower people to go that way. In few words, we need more innovators, and most importantly ambitious innovators.

Secondly, there is not much innovation in spanish tech start-ups. Apparently, even Guy Kawasaki has recommended us to stop copying American ideas and to contribute with real innovation if we pretend to attract big investments.

And third, and very important to me, our lack of entrepreneurship culture starts in the schools and ends in Universities. That's the reason why there are more events than entrepreneurs :( In any case, I believe that events are necessary to accomplish a shift. We need at least a first generation of successful innovators that can become the investors of new and more ambitious projects. Just as Bernardo Hernández is doing. We are late, but an important part of Europe is also late. We can still make it.
I went to the event really relaxed, I barely networked, except in Twitter, but I brought with me a really important question for the stage of my beloved Euroalert and its mission of creating a pan-european platform for public procurement information services gathering opportunities amounting the value of 17% of EU GDP:.

"Are we ready to change the world?

I must find the answer very soon. And yes, this can be taken as an invitation to potential investors interested in the project.

Do not worry I am not planning to leave to San Francisco sometime soon. That ship already sailed for me... a decade ago. And sometimes I still regret that. But I have not resigned to making a remarkable contribution to the business I know about, although I am based in a territory with poor resources to boost innovation.

Open Data Movement: Free our Data

It has been several months since I wanted to talk you about the Open Data Movement, specially after my participation in November in FICOD 09 representing Euroalert.net, in the roundtable about creating value through the reuse of public sector information.

During the past few months we have been living kind of an Open Data Rush that started with Obama's promise of government transparency, which in terms of data openness ended, among others, in Data.gov pioneering initiative. Since then several countries, mainly English speaking ones, have launched their own initiatives. You can check, New Zeeland Open Data Catalogue, or Australia Catalogue, and also individual cities like Open Toronto or New York City open data websites. There is a good repository of governments that are opening up their data vaults around the world at The Guardian Open Data Platform or at Fundacion CTIC website

In the European Union since 2003 we have the Directive 2003/98/EC on the Re-use of Public Sector Information (PSI) that has already been transposed into all the members national laws. That means, in simple words, that the EU27 Member States are enforced by law to promote open data, although to date only United Kingdom seems to be doing a significant effort. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is being advised by Sir Tim Berners Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt, has talked in several speeches about his aim of turning UK into a world leader in making government data more accessible to the public. This commitment to Open Data Community, considered as an important element of Building Britain’s Future, has led to Data.gov.uk website for the promotion of the reuse of UK public data or the announcement of the creation of "The Institute of Web Science" initially funded with £30M.

In Spain, we are quite far from leading anything in the web, although it is remarkable the effort done by Proyecto Aporta, a small initiative at the Ministry of Industry with very scarce resources, that I presented you a few months ago. For example, in March 2010 Proyecto Aporta launched a beta version of a catalogue of public information in Spain, which sadly contains very little raw data available, and thus, useful for reuse by companies or individuals.

There is not a strong political support from Spanish authorities, and Spain is going to loose another opportunity to improve its performance in digital innovation and to participate in the major changes in economy and society we are living. I cannot not understand why an initiative that would have such a huge positive impact on innovation it is not being pushed firmly in our country. Open Data is a very cheap investment for a Government and the main reasons that are pushing forward these initiatives around the world are purely economic. The European Commission estimated in 2006 that the overall market size for the reuse of Public Sector Information in the EU is 27.000 million Euros (0.25% of the total aggregated GDP for the EU)

In order to be up to date, I recommend the EPSIPlatform, Europe's One-Stop Shop on Public Sector Information (PSI) Re-use, where you will find, among other useful resources, the best tracking I know of all news, announcements and moves in the Open Data World. You can also follow EPSIplatform in Twitter. If you want to get involved I suggest you to follow The Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) projects around any kind of information that can be freely used, reused, and redistributed.

Open Data might be a drop in the ocean of economy, but it is a really cheap move, it is easy for public authorities, there are not major shortcomings, it does not hurt any industry and there is a lot of political return, apart from the economic as transparency is a hot topic for citizens. So please move on!. Companies need raw data for developing new and innovative products! Free our data!

Let´s dance innovation, Oslo Manual new vision on innovation

One of the novelties from the 3rd Edition of the Oslo Manual is focused on the consideration of non technological innovations. Thus, marketing and organizational innovations are considered to be one of the ways in which the business can innovate, besides the classical product and process innovations.

More specifically, marketing innovations are defined as the implementation of a new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing.

The innovation focused on design and packaging has manifold examples, but the other three kinds of marketing innovations seem to be difficult to identify and to distinguish from other innovation activities.

Just take a look at one of those three, and let’s see what we understand by marketing innovations focusing on new ways of product promotion. The Oslo Manual set that this kind of innovations (product promotion) involve the use of new concepts for promoting a firm’s goods and services. For example, the first use of a significantly different media or technique, such as product placement in movies or television programmes, or the use of celebrity endorsements, is a marketing innovation.

Other examples of marketing innovations are branding (significant changes), the introduction of a personalised information system, e.g. obtained from loyalty cards or other actions such as tailored presentations of products to the specific needs of individual customers.

Apparently, the Oslo Manual have adopted a wide vision considering some commercial or promotion practices as marketing innovation, let me give you an example and just take a look at this video and enjoy the dance marketing as a way of innovating. Do not tell me that there are not innovative ways to become an innovator:

Be serious: The Internet it is not just about "their culture"

I was not keen to participate in the debate started a couple of weeks ago around Sustainability-Economy-Act-hidden-reforms affecting the internet in Spain. (Have a quick look at #manifiesto debate in Twitter, search Blogs, browse the group in Facebook, etc). But the Ministry of Culture went too far, trying to skip some basic rules that citizens expect from their governments in democracy (listening to all interested parties, explaining the real extension of the reforms, ...) They did not even communicate the existence of the amendment!!!! Thanks to the malicious way they are intending to change the law, the controversy even reached Boing Boing, and Slashdot, two very remarkable hits considering the insignificant relevance of our country in the internet.

Just in case you do not want to go further reading this post, I am not going to write about freedom of speech, nor about fundamental rights. Perhaps only a little bit about Intellectual Property, but in a broader sense than these interested-guys-of-the-culture try to define the concept (as if they were the only creators...) If you are expecting that, you should follow A-list bloggers like Escolar, Julio Alonso, Enrique Dans, and most of the other 150K "activists".

Of course it does not matter at all if Escolar, Dans and the others who were generously spending (or wasting) their precious time at the Ministry represent the internet community or not. Where was I when such a thing was founded? Fortunately they must be intelligent enough not to worry about that meaningless debate.

What everybody seems to be forgetting about is that we are wasting the energies that we need to build a real knowledge-based economy, founded on innovative, competitive and productive industries. Instead of that we are increasing the gap with truly non-bricked based economies, and trying to enforce the shift in our economy by law. What kind of future do we deserve?

What I have really missed in all the manifiesto mess is a strong voice coming from the Ministry of Industry saying something like: Please kids of the culture, leave the internet alone. We are not going to let you kill our weak internet-based-innovation in the name of your more than questionable interests.

Do they really think that people do not go to the cinema to watch over-subsidized-spanish movies because of P2P?. Juas!. As everybody knows since ever, The Internet is for porn, not for downloading their second-class products.

Music will not disappear in 5 years. It will be a stronger industry because innovators will figure out more ways of making money in the new and global economic scenario, powered by the internet. Of course business models based on the selling of overcharged dvds will disappear. But this kind of transformations happen in every other activity sector when a crisis overcomes or a disruptive change happens. And change and crisis have always happened and the only way to survive is innovation.

And yes, I am really upset. Please keep your hands off the internet!!!!!. You are going to kill our little opportunity to reach developed economies. Yes, Intellectual Property needs to be redefined, but this is not the way. All the creators should have something to say because it is not only a matter of culture. And surely IP must be transformed in something else, apart from giving a right to sue people or closing websites.

Competing globaly with (poor) local resources

Companies use resources (inputs) to produce products and services (outputs) that they sell to other companies or individuals (market) with the aim of obtaining a profit. Some of the resources used as inputs by companies are called commodities because anyone can easily be supplied with them at the same price, quality, etc. Nothing new here (I am not getting a tenure for this).

Other resources can not be taken for granted, they are the base of the competitive advantage of the company. These are for example, resources you manage to be supplied with and that your competitors can not get in the same conditions as you could. Your customers like this, (your great services) and that is the reason why the market lets you survive. Nothing new here either (Definitely I am not getting a Nobel in Economics for this).

Theoretically, commodities do not make a difference for a company, even less in the digital economy but the point is that, sadly, the place where a company is based can be a big threat for its competitiveness. The Open Economy lets competitors interact regardless their location, but reality is that companies are not competing in the same conditions when we look at what they call commodities at their locations.

Lets look at a few examples in the digitally-developed-world like UK, Germany or USA, that are a big deal for companies in countries with a brick-based-economy like Spain:

• Bandwidth is the more obvious one. Cloud computing advances and its amazing possibilities are based on the assumption that Mbits are free (as in beer, not as in speech), or at least, too cheap to meter. Sadly IaaS services will not take off in countries like Spain where traditional datacenter services never reached competitive scales.
  
• Brilliant engineers are also near to be a commodity in some locations, but as there are not many Stanfords and Silicon Valleys, innovative people tend to migrate to that places. Again, the breach will be deeper for companies located in small or medium cities like Valladolid.
• Ubiquitous network access: if you go a few Km away from the city and it is not possible to get a decent Internet connection then Information Society will not speak Spanish for decades. Of course your possibilities for working in mobility are really short as you can not be out of the office. (disclaimer: this post has been written over a GPRS connection with a lot of pain.)
  

From my point of view some of these barriers could be easily mitigated with a good offering at the local airports. But if you have a look at the poor flight offering of an international airport like Valladolid with 3 or 4 flights (of course not daily) you will never consider that remote place to base your company if you plan to interact with customers, providers and staff in other parts of the world.

Most of these resources are not very complex (not even expensive) to develop at a regional level and the impact in the local digital economy is huge. Some regions are understanding this and in a few years their companies will be nearer to be competitive in the global digital scenery. Unfortunately the region where I live and my company is based will not.

Until Spanish governments, no matter national or regional, get a better understanding of the Open Economy, reality is that good engineers will migrate, innovative companies will look for a better place to base their headquarters and innovation and internationalization will be only the buzz words in speeches during the global crisis.

Crowdsourcing: You Create!!

Let’s dig into the participation economy by exploring the concept of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is the practice of opening up a business task to the public instead of keeping it in-house. As Business Week reported (June 15, 2009) crowdsourcing is the future of many sectors such as marketing, advertising and industrial design.

This concept comes from the assumption that creativity and talent outside the boundaries of the firm will be always bigger than the existing in-house. Businesses have the opportunity to link their needs to the competences of thousands and thousands of individuals to face company challenges.

Let me give you some examples to illustrate the concept. One of the best known crowdsourcing services is Innocentive, which is an open community of scientists and businesses working together on innovation. The business proposes a challenge, offering rewards up to 1 million dollars for who solves it. The challenges vary from Sustainable materials selection to Aroma & Flavour Enhancers. Henry Chesbrough coined the concept “open innovation” to explain the openness and community participation in the innovation process.

Another crowdsourcing example is Top Coder, a community of software developers and graphic designers operating on-line. Top Coder involves more than 200,000 developers, who compete for developing applications or designs. TC has its own working methodology which permits participants to work together on-line.

If you are looking for fresh ideas in design (logos, trademarks, corporate image,..) why don’t you visit CrowdSPRING, which define itself as an innovative marketplace for creative services. The functioning is simple; you just post your project, budget and deadline and wait for proposals. The community creativity always shifts expectations, if you do not believe me, just have a look of some of the works at CrowdSPRING.

Cowdsourcing is becoming a new way to work in the Open economy, competing globally and opening new opportunities for both, business and individuals.

Send your comments and opinions about pros and contras of crowdsourcing!!

If you want to know more about crowdsourcing try: Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business