Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

We need different kinds of Silicon Valley not more Silicon Valleys

Here in the mexican border city of Tijuana there’s been constant discussion about how to collaborate with our next door neighbor San Diego. I’ve actually been advocating for this myself by co-founding Startup Weekend here a few years ago and also by arranging partnerships with partners in San Diego and a client in Tijuana to provide a service where co-working spaces in San Diego and Tijuana create a type of pass for their members where anyone can arrive at any participating co-working space; free of charge.

These initiatives were done with the intent of stimulating cross-border collaboration between entrepreneurs, but it hasn’t been without its challenges.

Anyway, a few weeks ago I attended a local conference about Silicon Valley and San Diego as innovation ecosystems. Tijuana, like San Diego, is creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem to call their own but an ongoing challenge is that the conversation always ends up with Silicon Valley as a model to follow.…

Innovation is not a process of checking tasks off a checklist

Jorge in Innovation

While the rest of the world clamors on how we are settling into an entrepreneurial economy and how their respective countries are building entrepreneurial ecosystems, there are other non-entrepreneurial habits that come with the territory: charlatanism.

I’ve called attention to this before, and I keep bumping into the same thing over and over again. There are quite a few people out there who are masquerading as innovators/entrepreneurs. A lot of them are nothing more than promoters/commentators /observers who take some known frameworks and play a game of plug-and-play.

For example, I recently talked to a guy who is forming a consultancy with another group of people (one of which who works in a government funded venture fund) to help entrepreneurs plan and execute their startup. Their plan is simple: help entrepreneurs fill out the business model and value proposition canvas for free, and then ask them for %5 of the company if they go ahead and launch.…

10 books about innovation I recommend you read

Jorge in Innovation

innovation books

Like other people who write about, consult on , and do innovation, I get asked about books a lot. There are the basics you want to read like Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker, The Innovator’s Solution, Crossing the Chasm and others. I tend to want to read books that have more unconventional ideas in them, as well as some practicality.

With that said, here are a few books about innovation that I recommend you read:…

8 Lessons from Startup Weekend Tijuana

Jorge in Innovation

Startup Weekend Tijuana is in the books.

This past weekend was fast paced and intense. Exciting. Almost 50 participants, 25 ideas, 8 projects and 3 winners. Two of them left the event with seed capital.

Here are the projects:

WachaBache. A mobile application to crowdsource the reporting of streets that have holes and make driving a miserable experience.
Indueducation. A web service that offers leading indicators to help the government with academic decision making.
Eventum. A community for public social events.
Cruzas. A mobile application that shows indicators of when it is a good time to cross the border to San Diego.
Happy Birthday 2 me. A web service to help you organize your birthday and take advantage of local business offers.
Congresoplon. Monitoring the productivity of Congress and its participants.
Pimiento. Mobile app that suggests cooking recipes based on the ingredients that you have in your home.
Instapart. Find the auto part your are looking for in real-time.

And the winners were:

Instapart
Cruzas
Eventum

Great job guys.…

Mandatory Innovation

Jorge in entrepreneurship, Innovation

Have you heard of Krav Maga?

If you have, that’s really cool. If you haven’t, then you’ve seen Matt Damon use Krav Maga to kick butt in the Jason Bourne movies.

Krav Maga is a fighting technique that is practiced all over the world. It originated in Europe but was refined in Israel, where the International Krav Maga Federation is located. What’s interesting is that Krav Maga is taught to every Israeli soldier. And every civilian.

Remember that in Israel, every citizen goes through basic military training.

This got me thinking as I was watching the Human Weapon episode of Krav Maga. Just like it’s mandatory for Israeli’s to go through basic military training, what if we made it mandatory to teach every civilian entrepreneurship?

Sounds crazy right?…

The Pivot?

Jorge in Strategy

It’s funny how we humans assign different names to concepts that have existed for a long time. We coin new terms that embody old concepts. Take the concept of ‘The Pivot‘.

It’s become the new buzzword in Entrepreneurship circles thanks to Eric Ries and his Lean Startup concept: