metarand

Social Business School: Harvard Points The Way

Social business, the birth of a new industry? I called it in September 2009 and since then social business has risen like a star. Sure, it has a long way to go before it becomes pervasive, but watching Harvard Business School transform itself into a Social Business School is surely a major milestone on the industry’s journey.

If you’ve read my submission to the Australian Federal Government on Entrepreneurism and Venture Capital, you’ll know I’m a huge fan of immersion-style, experiential learning. One of my key tenets is to call for the establishment of a Conservatorium of Entrepreneurship. Harvard is already moving down this path, as this article in Fast Company highlights. Well worth a read.

$100m fund sought to foster entrepreneurs

Rachel Lebihan has written a piece in the Australian Financial Review covering my submission to the Australian Federal Government’s review of the state of entrepreneurship and venture capital.

I’ve uploaded a scan of the article here and here.

WeTeachMe: A Case Study In Pure Unadulterated Hustle

It’s one thing to say, “Where there is a will, there is a way,” but another thing to go out there and put it into practice. The team didn’t want to be another startup that complains about how difficult it is to raise capital. We wanted to take matters into our own hands and do something about it. The need to stay alive was also very motivating.

We’re a strong team, and not only do we know what we have been capable of doing in the past, we know what we can do in the future, and to what extent we are willing to go to make things happen.

The Science of Startups and the Symbiosis between Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital

It’s been a really interesting week in Sydney. On Friday afternoon the latest cohort of Startmate startups strutted their stuff in a demo day to a capacity crowd at DLA Piper’s offices in the city.

Yesterday, Eric Ries spoke to another, much larger, audience on his Lean Startup theories. The auditorium at the Australian Technology Park hasn’t buzzed like that since the heady days of 1999!

Eric’s thesis that we should be measuring and managing startups in a much more sophisticated way totally resonates with me. I have been calling for a science of startups for a while now and in fact included this as one of my main points in a submission I put forward to the Australian Federal Government earlier this week. They had put out an Issues Paper calling for submissions (I understand this was targeted at certain people and organisations) on the state of entrepreneurship and venture capital in the country.

My submission (you can read the entire thing here) spoke to the establishment of an Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital (ACEVC). This Centre will include an Entrepreneurship Conservatory that is focused on developing a results-based set of training programs for upskilling entrepreneurs using a real time, interactive pedagogy that will form the basis for a ‘science of startups’.

I also call for a VC College that can provide real life experiential training on the job for successive generations of Australian venture capitalists – an initiative designed to build up a true venture capital industry.

I believe that ACEVC is transportable to many other geographies so for all metarand readers from other parts of the world than Australia: feel free to adopt these ideas for your own country.

Besides Eric’s push for lean startups another great evangelist for the science of startups is Steve Blank with his recently released book, The Startup Owner’s Manual. I highly recommend both books for entrepreneurs.

Should/when ACEVC gets up and running, it will draw heavily on the the great work Eric and Steve have done so far to codify the science of startups.

Ambitious Ideas: Open Sourced Drug Discovery

Paul Graham penned a wonderfully inspirational post recently in which he discussed a number of ‘frighteningly ambitious startup ideas’. Given his proclivity for software and the Internet it is not surprising that the ideas he raises were things like replacing Google’s search engine dominance and delivering us from inbox evil.

Quite separately, a colleague at The University of Sydney, Matthew Todd,  forwarded me an article overnight that he co-authored in Nature on “open science as a research accelerator’.

In the article Matthew and two others discuss how open source-inspired thinking led him on a journey to produce an off-patent drug that could help millions of people around the world deal with bilharzia, a silent pandemic.

From their perspective the key benefit of their open approach was the acceleration of the research:

Experts identified themselves, and spontaneously contributed based on what was being posted online. The research therefore inevitably proceeded faster than if we had attempted to contact people in our limited professional circle individually, in series.

While Matthew was working on open sourcing process chemistry, he posits the question whether a similar approach could be applied to drug discovery.

The pharmaceutical industry is currently undergoing somewhat of a pipeline-related crisis and so the timing could not be better for such an approach to work.

In line with Paul’s thinking this is one of those frighteningly ambitious ideas. As Matthew points out, “There has been discussion of open-source drug discovery, but no coordinated efforts at compound discovery.”

This seems to me to be an area ripe for investigation. One that could herald a new age of abundance (read Peter Diamindis’s new book on this) in health and wellness.

I hope this is a topic that will be covered at the upcoming Founders Fund future conference!

Goal Oriented Curation: The Next Big Thing In Social Media

Elad Gil has an excellent post which maps out the evolution of social media from long-form (blogging) to push-button (short form tweeting, retweeting and news feeds) through to structured curation (interest sets or boards).

As you may know I’ve been a big fan if curation for a number of years (see the 2009 Seggr Report) and the rise of curation sites such as Pinterest, Snip.It and Fab.com are validation that this is a growing area.

I particularly agree with David King’s point (as highlighted by Elad) that structured curation is not only creating a major point of differentiation for Pinterest et al, but is also blocking the big short formers like Facebook from swallowing their curations.

Elad titles his post How Pinterest Will Transform the Web in 2012: Social Content Curation As The Next Big Thing and he may well be right. But I’d like to posit that the really, really interesting area is one step beyond social curation. Social media for social’s sake is fast becoming passé. Social media needs to find a purpose and do so fast. So here is my prediction: goal-oriented curation is the killer app for social media.

In some respects Pinterest is a precursor to goal-oriented curation, but I’d argue that is does not go far enough. Just over the horizon sites like StyleSays are pointing the way.

StyleSays sees itself as “Pinterest for fashion and beauty products”. A user gets to save items into wish lists from any online store and then share those with friends who they trust and ultimately influence, in much the same way they would do when out shopping together in the bricks and mortar retail environment.

But let’s go one step further. I believe a really interesting application of goal-oriented curation awaits within the health and wellness arena. I can see how a well crafted site could both curate and influence positive behavioural change. A “Pinterest for health and wellness” may just be the next big thing!

Australia’s Technology Prowess: The Internet and Beyond

Asher Moses has written a wonderfully inspirational piece in the Sydney Morning Herald regarding the rise and rise of Australian entrepreneurial talent. In it he explores how well some of the Internet-focused startups born in Australia are doing in sourcing Silicon Valley venture capital.

It is a great story and touches on much of my experience over the past 15 years. Australia and, closer to home – Sydney, has an incredible wealth of entrepreneurs. But in Asher’s story there is also a hint at the dark side. Let me paint the picture in three ways:

1. Financial arrogance

While I was living in Silicon Valley I assisted a startup to raise its first round of funding from a tier one VC firm, in two weeks and right in the middle of the GFC. Fast forward to today and as Asher has eruditely pointed out, tier one VC’s from Sandhill Road are currently falling over themselves to get the attention of Australia web startups.

Against this backdrop, picture me meeting with a senior executive at one of Australia’s most successful investment banks in the past fortnight. In that meeting I was told how incredibly hard it is to find funding for technology businesses, how no-one is investing in this space in Australia and blah blah. Can you see the disconnect here?

I personally believe Australian ‘investors’ have a heightened level of financial arrogance driven by an absolute ignorance of technology and also tainted in their financial risk profiling by resource-based investing (mining etc).

As long as this position remains I can fully understand why Australian entrepreneurs are US-centric. For Australia though this amounts to a major loss as we are not only losing talent in droves, but also access to ROI as our entrepreneurs grow great businesses with other people’s money!

2. Technological bias

For as long as I can remember Australian government granting schemes and venture firms have had a bias against Internet-related companies. They have preferred to back biotech businesses and other science-heavy companies that are notoriously hard to scale globally and which usually have a hard time getting international attention due to the tyranny of distance.

It is heartening to see this position starting to shift and that web-focused ventures are in fact now getting more access to schemes like Commercialisation Australia.

3. Web-centrism

While I am ecstatic about Australia’s well deserved recognition (finally) for great entrepreneurial talent, I am somewhat concerned that we get seen as only producing web-centric talent and intellectual property.

The Australian Federal government pours some $9.8 billion into public research and there is incredible technology floating around within the countries 43 universities and even more public research institutes (by contrast the US only has 41 universities). However, most of this never sees the light of day. It gets locked up in over-protective tech transfer quagmires and/or stuck in the valley of death between research proof of principle and commercial proof of concept due to a massive lack of funding for this gap.

In contrast, in the UK companies like Imperial Innovations and the IP Group, and Allied Minds in the US, are absolutely going gangbusters building businesses around research intensive technologies and assisting IP through the valley of death.

Australia desperately needs a similar business and it is on my to do list for 2012 to see that one forms. We need to not only continue to support our web-centric entrepreneurs, but also inspire generations of Australians to become tech entrepreneurs in areas that can have major global impact such as energy and health!

No Joke: How to Earn $1 million in less than 2 weeks

Louis CK has proven that people are willing to pay for quality content, even if it is available freely.

The comedian put out a video of his latest performance at $5 a pop via his website. He then used social media to market it and whammo – in 12 days he amassed a whopping $1 million.

Story via Mashable.

Singapore: Paving A National Framework for Research, Innovation and Enterprise

In July 2009 I was compelled to write a paper on how I saw the Australian Federal government could assist in creating a ecosystem for research, innovation and entrepreneurship. At the time they had announced that they were going to set up a Commonwealth Commercialisation Institute. I wanted to give them some of my insights after more than a decade in the space in Australia and the US.

Fast forward more than two years. My paper was largely ignored. Instead the Federal government set up Commercialisation Australia, which is essentially yet another granting body. It does little more than hand out staged grants, there is no hint at the matrixed ecosystem this country so desperately needs to move itself forward.

In contrast let’s take a look at one country that is powering ahead: Singapore. Note that there are others doing great things too, but let’s just focus on one, that’s close enough geographically to really show off how far behind Australia is lagging.

Set up as a department within the Prime Ministers Office in 2006, Singapore’s National Research Foundation sets the national direction for research and development by putting in place policies, plans and strategies for research, innovation and enterprise, funds strategic initiatives, builds up R&D capabilities and capacities through nurturing Singapore’s talent and attracting foreign talent, and co-ordinates the research agenda of different agencies focused on transforming Singapore into a knowledge-intensive, innovative and entrepreneurial economy. One of the NRF’s aims is to make Singapore a talent magnet for scientific and innovation excellence.

In March 2008 Singapore’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council, which is chaired by the Prime Minister, approved the establishment of a National Framework for Innovation and Enterprise (NFIE). This framework was set up to encourage universities and polytechnics to pursue academic entrepreneurship and turn their R&D results into commercial products for the marketplace, while also assisting entrepreneurs to start-up technology based companies.

Currently the NFIE has a budget of $360 million, which is used to support a range of ecosystem creating initiatives, namely:

• Early Stage Venture Funds – the NRF invests $10m, on a 1:1 matching basis, to seed VC funds for investing into Singapore-based early stage high-tech companies. The VCs can buy out the NRF’s share within 5 years by returning NRF’s capital with a nominal interest;
• Proof of Concept Grants – grants of up to $250,000 are provided for technology proof of concept development projects, both for researchers and companies;
• Disruptive Innovation Incubator – this scheme supports a business incubator which invests in Singapore-based start-ups with disruptive innovation;
• Technology Incubation Scheme – the NRF invests up to $500,000 in Singapore-based start-up companies that are incubated by selected technology incubators;
• Translational R&D Grants for Polytechnics – the provision of development grants of up to $500,000 to researchers to carry out translational research;
• University Innovation Fund – the provision of funding to the Singapore universities for approved innovation-related activities;
• National Framework of IP Principles – a framework designed to speed up the licensing of IP from universities and research institutes to industry;
• Innovation and Enterprise Institute – the Institutes objective is to help develop the innovation and enterprise ecosystem by providing the necessary information, research methodology and relevant networks to galvanise innovation and enterprise activities in Singapore;
• Global Entrepreneur Executives – this scheme is aimed at attracting high-growth and high-tech venture-backed companies with global entrepreneurial executives in ICT, medtech and clean tech to relocate to Singapore. The NRF invests up to $3 million in matching funding to eligible companies via convertible notes; and
• Innovation Vouchers Scheme – local enterprises are give vouchers under this scheme that are redeemable for R&D and technical services from universities and public research institutes.

Using Science Fiction Prototyping To Break Through The Consensus Innovation And Get Big Things Done Barrier

One of my favorite science fiction authors, Neal Stephenson, has written an article titled Innovation Starvation, in which he discusses how science fiction can be used to spur scientists on to make big breakthroughs. I want to extract a few comments from his article before exploring the exciting world of Science Fiction (SF) Prototyping.

Neal worries that our inability to match the achievements of the 1960s space program might be symptomatic of a general failure of our society to get big things done. My parents and grandparents witnessed the creation of the airplane, the automobile, nuclear energy, and the computer to name only a few. Scientists and engineers who came of age during the first half of the 20th century could look forward to building things that would solve age-old problems, transform the landscape, build the economy…

Yet fast forward to today and where are we? Neal uses the example of energy:-

We’ve been talking about wind farms, tidal power, and solar power for decades. Some progress has been made in those areas, but energy is still about oil. In my city, Seattle, a 35 year old plan to run a light rail line across Lake Washington is now being blocked by a citizen initiative. Thwarted or endlessly delayed in its efforts to build things, the city plods ahead with a project to paint bicycle lanes on the pavement of thoroughfares.

Frustrated by our far broader inability as a society to execute on the big stuff, Neal has turned to the tools of his trade – science fiction writing for a panacea. He believes that science fiction as hieroglyph-maker has relevance in this area:-

Good SF supplies a plausible , fully thought-out picture of an alternate reality in which some sort of compelling innovation has taken place. A good SF universe has a coherence and internal logic that makes sense to scientists and engineers. Examples include Isaac Asimov’s robots, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ships, and (another of my favorites) William Gibson’s cyberspace. As Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research puts it, such icons serve as hieroglyphs – simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees.

Neal continues to define the problem and how SF can address it:-

Researchers and engineers have found themselves concentrating on more and more narrowly focused topics as science and technology have become more and more complex. A large technology company or lab might employ hundreds or thousands of persons, each of whom can address only a thin slice of the overall problem.

I agree that this ‘specialisation’ is an issue. However, I also believe that a culture of consensus is greatly affecting our ability to focus on and get big things solved. Much research is being driven by consensus innovation – academics are recognized and rewarded for publishing highly cited papers. Controversy does not increase citation count, nor does publishing in areas that fall outside the scientific vogue of the day.

Neal notes that many researchers and engineers have a fondness for SF, which reflects, in part, the usefulness of an over-arching narrative that supplies them and their colleagues with a shared vision.

The imperative to develop new technologies and implement them on a heroic scale no longer seems like the childish preoccupation of a few nerds with slide rules. It’s the only way for the human race to escape from its current predicaments.

This meme that we should all be working on solving big stuff that matters is something of a bug bear for me. I’ve written, for example,  about harnessing the power of social to solve big problems like the obesity pandemic. Others are echoing this – Tim O’Reilly recently tweeted:

…someone else makes the appeal for entrepreneurs to work on stuff that matters…

He pointed to an article in which Alyson Shontell picks up on the meaningful innovation meme over at Business Insider. She writes that young founders seem to be enthralled with building fun but meaningless apps. She quotes VC Mark Suster as saying, “The auto industry alone is a $1.6 trillion industry, and you want to f*ck with bars and restaurants?”

But how do we inspire researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs to break out of the consensus innovation mould?

This is where SF prototyping as a means of exploring Hieroglyphs and providing inspiration for big products to solve big issues can come to the rescue.

Just as Neal Stephenson is calling for SF writers to think big and bold and inspire generations of researchers, engineers and entrepreneurs to tackle projects that can allow us to escape our current problems, so SF prototyping provides a useful tool to harness science fiction, the playground of our imaginations, tethered to science fact to both imagine our future and enable the development of new technologies and products.

Intel futurecaster, Brian David Johnson, has written a book on the interesting arena of “Science Fiction Protyping: Designing the Future with Science Fiction” in which he explores the use of three publishing genres to create SF protyptes – short stories, movies and comics.

For anyone involved in exploring the boundaries of possibility and charting the trendmaps of the nextnow and the distant future, SF prototyping can be an extremely useful tool. I’ll be writing more on this area in due course.

Think big, think ahead and let’s solve for the future.