Are all innovators alike?Michael Dearing, a venture capitalist, has developed strong views on the similarities of innovators after screening over three thousand founders and funding over sixty companies since 2006. Dearing observed that the most successful founders are prone to certain “cognitive distortions”: biased, even objectively inaccurate, ways they think of themselves and filter information that enable them to make quicker and better decisions, bounce back from setbacks, and attract talent.
Tag Archives: entrepreneurship
Do Aspiring Movie Directors Need Hollywood To Be Successful?
What do you do when you move your whole family to pursue your dream of making movies in Hollywood and it doesn’t work out? You try again…
And head back home to Mexico; more specifically Tijuana.…
The Startup Equation with Ja-Naé Duane
Starting a business? On this episode of The Big Bang Podcast I talk to Ja-Naé Duane, serial entrepreneur and co-author of The Startup Equation, about her mission to help one million entrepreneurs worldwide create one trillion dollars for the global economy. …
Economist Intelligence Unit Research on Innovation Clusters
Why does Silicon Valley sustain innovation? What distinct behaviors drive that?
While it’s wrong to want to create ones own Silicon Valley, all innovation ecosystems share common traits.
On this episode of the Big Bang podcast I interview Adam Green, senior editor in the Thought Leadership department at the Economist Intelligence Unit, sister company to The Economist newspaper, on innovation clusters.
Adam is the lead researcher for the Economist Intelligence Unit research on innovation clusters. The report info graphics and short documentary explore innovation clusters globally, discusses their key success factors, and looks at how they change over their life cycle. We have looked at examples from Bangalore, London, Boulder, Singapore and Estonia, with interviewees from the likes of Imperial College, the London School of Economics and techUK. We’ve been particularly interested to show how innovation clusters themselves evolve, and the challenges that success can bring.
Below are some questions we discussed:
- What is one trait that determines success of an entrepreneurial ecosystem?
- What are the critical components of an innovation ecosystem?
- What is the key component to start with if no other components are present?
- What cultural characteristics are necessary for an innovation ecosystem to function?
- What evidence, individual and/or organizational, will tell us that this culture is developing?
- How can we adjust and improve an innovation ecosystem to increase its effectiveness?
- How do innovation clusters change over time?
It was an insightful conversation, and hope you find it useful.
Let us know what you think on Twitter @jorgebarba and @adrianpedrin.
Watch the live recording:
Like our weekly podcast? Subscribe to my YouTube channel or blog newsletter.
The Big Bang is a weekly podcast. Tune in every Tuesday for more discussions on what’s possible; be sure to subscribe on SoundCloud.
Intro audio is by Arturo Arriaga, outro audio is Candyland by Guy J.
Are all problems worth fixing?
in Innovation
I admit that I’m of the particular mindset of looking out into the world and find flaws— glitches in the system— and construct logical paths in my mind to fix them.
And, if I can start crafting a solution with a blank slate the better. Who doesn’t like thinking about what’s possible!
But, are all problems worth fixing?…
Ideas that must die Pt.1
So far, in this podcast, we’ve discussed the possibilities of ideas that if created would improve the world. On this episode we flip the script, rather than asking if a new idea is a good one, we ask whether it’d be better if some of the ideas we cling to were killed off.
All good ideas must die (so that great ideas might live). With that said, similar to how you kill stupid rules to innovate, what ideas, if eliminated, would improve our life?…
What your startup makes should give your customer superpowers
One of the hardest things to do when defining what your business does is explaining it in the simplest of terms; the key challenge is distinguishing between features and benefits. The reason that this is so vitally important is that, in the words of User Onboarding: “People don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves.”…