CEO Opening - Pakistan ICT R&D Fund

Pakistan's Ministry of Information Technology has opened up the position for the CEO (of National ICT R&D Fund) to lead its roughly $35m for information and communication technology, see details here.  Of interest to my readers would be the Centers of Innovation RFPs in multiple sectors here.  A good beginning!

Startup Visa to USA?

USA's innovation comes from the outside or the "outside" mind (~50% of top tier patents filed are by immigrants to USA or naturalized citizens)... details regarding legislation being requested here. Similarly, I wrote about Dubai's startup visa here.

If passed, this will be an interesting way to attract "creative" minds to the USA. The cost of entry is pretty minimal if one considers - "The bill requires each entrepreneur to have a sponsoring US venture capital or angel investor who will invest at least $100,000 in their startup, and total funds raised must be at least $250,000 per company."

The question that remains for me is if the equity of USA is still strong enough among the innovators of the world for them come over? Also, why wouldn't the Silicon Valley VC give, let's take for example a robotics company in Thailand (the reader can easily find the company I refer to) $100,000 which will go ten times farther in both attracting top talent and run operations?

Perhaps the policy being suggested is more reactionary as most things government are... that is after the fact! Has the ship sailed?

Indian Consumer Debt Recovery Technique

An approach deployed by Indian banks to recover consumer debt - "He is a private money recovery agent – more commonly referred to here as a goon – who is hired by a large private bank to collect debts from credit card holders. Mr Shirole requested the bank not be named." See details here.

This provides a unique insight into adoption of or perhaps "copying and pasting" of what may have worked elsewhere while the current policies and infrastructure do not allow for sustainability of the solution.

The East Rising

The Economist states: "The East is undoubtedly rising but its new day has barely begun." Excellent graphical representation of regional growth comparisons.

Data To Information - Monitor to Manage

Nice audio at The Economist on data gathering, its conversion to information and the value that can be extracted, both retrospectively and predictively - "information about the information society"

Copy and Paste Urbanism - New Songdo

Friend and colleague Franz Dill sends along a great article from Fast Company, "Cisco's Big Bet on New Songdo: Creating Cities From Scratch" here.

Having experienced the building and growth of cities from scratch such as Dubai, a key aspect missing in the article is the fact that humans form societies and the societies revolve around culture.  The success of copied and pasted cities will depend on whether the regime or government supporting the effort is autocratic or democratic.  Autocratic regimes will have a higher success rate with copying and pasting.  A democratic environment that will respect individual rights and choices, either perceived or real, will have a tendency to challenge the status quo represented by the product (city) being replicated.

Replicating cities in democracies will need a substantial marketing budget to be successful!

Also, such cities developed in regions where the qualitative and quantitative value to the inhabitants increases substantially, the success rate for a short period of time will again be good.

In the final analysis, if a people or place defining the cities, regions, or nations do not represent a uniqueness or distinction, after the initial uptick the sustainability of such becomes questionable.

Creative Thinking

Sharp designer Raheel Waqar passes along a nice write up on Creative Thinking from Interbrand here.  The article has a few nuggets on brand focused approach to solution development, but it does come across as a pamphlet for Interbrand marketing.

I always refer to Edward De Bono when it comes to "thinking" based ideation, conceptualization moving into analysis and realization of a solution.  See De Bono books on the subject here.

User Centric Design is Dead

Found at Design Sojourn "User Centered Design Innovation is Dead", details here.  Reminds me of a Steve Jobs quote - "You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new."

Istabsir: Reflect and Contemplate

Following is an interesting videographic and photographic view point on the various aspects of life in the UAE in a weekly series started by the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National here.  It also highlights where the nation has come from and where it may be headed.

In-Context Consumer Innovation

Prith Banerjee, Director of HP Labs talks about the importance of innovation in-context of the consumer's environment, from the McKinsey:

"Today, HP Labs is in seven different locations around the world. We are in India, China, Russia, Israel, and all over the place. And the reason we moved to those locations has nothing to do with cheap labor. By moving a researcher from Palo Alto to India—and maybe the cost is half that in India—it has nothing to do with cheap labor.

It has to do with the researchers in India trying to tap into the talent in India. And the researchers in India are actually working on projects that are relevant to that context. So HP Labs India, its mission is innovation for the next billion customers.

I strongly believe that it is not very easy for researchers sitting in Palo Alto to imagine the problems for the billion people in India, the vegetable vendors in India. What kind of cell phones, what kind of PDA devices would they need to solve their day-to-day problems?

Sitting here in Palo Alto, you imagine that the whole world is developed, and it’s not. So the researchers in India are actually working on precisely those problems. They are looking at rich, intuitive interfaces; they are looking at devices, sort of a smart phone for the Indian market. There are a billion people in India. More than 70 percent of the people have cell phones, but only 5 percent of people have PCs, computers, in their homes. So what we are trying to do is to see how we can enable the remaining 95 percent of people in India to embrace computing.

The challenge isn’t that they can’t afford a computer. It’s true, a computer is $1,000. But they are affording televisions. They’re affording cars. They’re affording scooters. So clearly it is not the price, it is the value. Can we bring value to those people in India? And that’s an example of a project that is going on—it’s a project called a value device, a sort of cloud service and a platform environment that they are working on in India. Completely innovative. And those kinds of projects would not have happened from the researchers in Palo Alto."

Economic Forecasts

A valuable quote to remember regarding predictions on economics: "The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable," said J.K. Galbraith, a Harvard economist.

China replaces Germany to become world's largest exporter

Via Tony Tsai - "China replaces Germany to become world's largest exporter; US experts: Chinese companies are not powerful on their own:  China has replaced Germany to become the world's largest exporter in 2009, according to a Wall Street Journal report citing data from Global Trade Information Services. Scott Kennedy, a China expert and political scientist at Indiana University, says that the high volume of China's exports "is not speaking to how important and powerful Chinese companies are on their own" because 60% of China's exports were generated from foreign-controlled enterprises. [ifeng.com, 2010.01.06]"