incub3.org

What is innovation?

Click on the link above and you’ll get a surprisingly long list. I shall settle for “different from what was before in great or small ways.”

I think we’ve not really addressed the issue of innovation before even though this is a blog about entrepreneurship and innovation lies at the heart of this. Small things can make a big difference, and that is certainly one of the central lessons to take home about innovation.

Vik Singh, leader of Yahoo’s BOSS team recently found that out for himself when he took Twitter and combined it with Yahoo’s search engine. In his own words “Twitter as a ranking signal for search freshness may prove to be very useful if constructed properly.” Then, in under 100 lines of code, he created a search engine that provides news more up-to-date than what we’ve seen before. To put that in a little perspective, Windows 98 took 13 million lines of code to write.

Two lessons are to be learned here. One is that a little innovation goes a long way. Second, are search engines about to become commmoditized?

reposted from Northisup

In economics jargon, we like to say that correlation doesn’t imply causation. What this means is that just because the sun rises at the same time that the cockerel crows, it doesn’t mean this proves that the cockerel crowing caused the sun to rise, or vice versa.

Likewise, graduating from a good university like NUS magna cum laude doesn’t imply anything about your ability to be a good entrepreneur.

Ali Zaki Mahomed is an engineering graduate of NUS. His new startup TimeSvr has been getting favourable reviews here and here. When asked how he saw his company against the competition, Zaki replied “We really don’t compare ourselves to anyone. We just saw a market underserved and decided to fill the void.”
The void, as it is, is the fact that very busy people in developed countries with a wired lifestyle would rather outsource the endless stream of errands that are part and parcel of modern life than have to spend a significant portion of the day attending to them.

I say what I say because I know for a fact that Zaki is long on brains but short on grades *wink*, and if my idea that academic success is inversely proportional to business success is correct, I should be starting up the next google any day now. Wish me luck.

Twitter may be shiny and new, but its finances are reminiscent of the dark age of the dot-com bust. With no revenue or business plan, Twitter is still subsisting on investor capital. Before you think that Twitter is going the way of the web-based dodo, note that VC firms Benchmark Capital and IVP recently pumped $35 million into Twitter and Facebook bid $500 million of its stock for Twitter, reflecting rock solid investor confidence.

So confident is Twitter of its future that it organized its inaugural Shorty Awards in New York recently, honouring remarkable twitterers in categories as varied as food and videogames. People are finding remarkable uses for Twitter beyond its already amazing social value, including controlling home appliances and monitoring your home’s security. There is an excellent chance that some of these uses will ultimately become profitable. Even without these alternative uses, Twitter is already generating ad revenue in Japan, and getting fans from the American Congress and Israeli Consulate. Will we see Twitter bidding for government contracts to disseminate information in the future? Don’t bet against it.

This post today can almost be called a stock tip. What would you do if you were one of the largest battery manufacturers in China for cell phones and were looking to diversify?

Which of the following moves would you choose to implement and secure your company’s future?

1. Research into super-efficient batteries that will indirectly help cut back on emissions from power plants.
2. Buy up electronic components manufacturers to capture more of the value-added chain in producing electronic devices.
3. Diversify and enter the car manufacturing market with one of the country’s first hybrid cars.

If your razor-sharp business acumen led you to pick option three, congratulations! Your brand of strategic leadership is worthy of a massive capital injection from Warren Buffett.

Chinese companies are not known for the build quality, or the safety, of their products. But with this baby from BYD Auto already in mass production, there is every chance that this could soon change.

Here’s an observation about modern life. Much of what we love comes in small portions. Happy Meals with toys from McDonald’s come in sets. “Collect all 7!” Sitcoms come in seasons of 20 episodes, and even Harry Potter came in 7 books. Would it now surprise any of you, really, if I told you that games are now produced in episodes?

“American McGee‘s Grimm” is an episodic game with 23 episodes of dark, twisted fun. In it, the titular character “Grimm”, is a foul, wicked little bearded dwarf who befouls anything he touches. In each episode, Grimm uses his putrid, filthy influence on his surroundings to turn our modernized, sanitized versions of fairy tales into the vile, cautionary tales of days-gone-by. It is actually true that modern fairy tales were mostly gruesome, disgusting tales used to scare boys and girls into behaving themselves. Don’t be surprised if your favourite fairy tale as a child turned out to be a harrowing story of sex and gore.

Gruesomeness aside, American McGee’s Grimm is a pioneering work that has started to mature. There is even talk recently of turning it into a graphic novel. Aspiring entrepreneurs should take note. Your next favourite sitcom might turn out to be an episodic game.

Ladies & Gentlemen we have an announcement to make. After weeks of begging, pleading, cajoling and threats of virtual violence, we’ve managed to invite the two founders of Nuffnang to speak at our inaugural talk.

The two gentlemen are (in alphabetical order): Cheo Ming Shen (Boss Ming) & Timothy Tiah (Boss Stewie). Both these fine gentlemen will be coming over to the University Hall auditorium @ NUS on the 4th of March (Wed). The talk itself will take place from 7pm till an estimated 830-9pm.

For the uninitiated, Nuffnang is as they say, Asia Pacific’s first blog advertising community. It is also a company that grew its user base from 300 to 70,000 in under 2 years. It currently has operations in 4 countries (Aus/M’sia/Phi/Sg) and counts such blogosphere luminaries as Kennysia, Xiaxue, Jeffooi and Dawn Yang among its members. Sometimes, learning about the existence of such a company feels like discovering life on Mars. The odds are stacked against it and the very laws of nature must have been broken.

Are there enough famous bloggers to support this industry? How did they avoid getting crushed by Google Adwords? Can blog ads be as profitable as ads on regular webpages? Do that many people from Singapore, Malaysia or the Philippines actually click on banner ads? Is e-commerce secure enough for advertisers to make money?

All these questions and more can finally be answered.

If you’d like to attend please click here to REGISTER.

We only have 100 places available as the venue is small. We sacrificed seat quantity for ambience. It’ll be great! see you there

I’m not a big fan of MS. If anything, the WPF developer kit installation process was so long that it irked me. That being said, I’m a big fan of Bill Gates and his work nowadays. While the Internet, or more specifically, tools such as Facebook Causes has given arms and legs to the various causes that we stand for, there’re just some problems that are gigantic, but are only being solved slowly due to the lack of market motivation.

Enter visionaries like Bill Gates and Peter Diamandis. Extremely successful people, with significant influence in both public and private sectors across various geographies, they identify the significant problems faced by the world, and am willing to put in not just money, but time and effort influencing others to focus on solving the problems that the world faces.

In the latest talk given by Gates as part of TED 2009, which is an annual conference that brings together thought leaders from the Technology, Entertainment, Design worlds and more, he share about 2 problems that he is currently passionate about solving:
1. How do you stop a deadly disease that is spread by mosquitos?
2. How do you make a teacher great?

Interesting Notes
- More money put into baldness drug development than malaria as the rich man are bald
- Malaria control requires skills from all areas (math, computing, pharma, etc.)
- If US had top tier teachers, gap between US & Asia in Math & Sci would go away in 2 years
- Masters degree doesn’t correlate with teaching quality – Past performance does
- Slightly better teachers leave the system, not the lousy teachers
- Check out KIPP teaching styles through the book “Work Hard Be Nice”

For all current and aspiring leaders out there, What are you doing today (to change the world)?

Side-note: Check out the multi-inbox view on Gmail! Love it!

Original Post at http://blog.wonghongting.com

There must be a streak of the contrarian in the Friedman family. Patri Friedman’s grandfather was Milton Friedman, who contributed heavily to the school of thought now called the Chicago school of economics. Patri himself was a former googler who has unconventional views on everything from diet to libertarianism.

If you had to pick a project of Patri’s to be considered as the height of insanity, that must most certainly be the Seasteading Institute. In the latest issue of Wired magazine, a feature on Patri speaks of the dream that the Seasteading Institute was founded for, to establish a cheap (relatively), mobile oceangoing platform that is self-sustaining and possibly a sovereign country. The idea of a tiny but rich nation surely won’t seem alien to anyone from Singapore, Monaco or Vatican City, but at 160,000 square feet, even Singapore seems like China by comparison. Of course, Singapore or China can’t achieve what the Seasteading mission states, that is:

Mind-blowing stuff. What is even more remarkable, for those who feel by numbers, is that 160,000 square feet of lawless paradise can be bought for an estimated 3 million USD. That’s peanuts for having your own country. I certainly wouldn’t mind forking out money for a mobile country that I can live on with like-minded individuals in the seas between East and West Malaysia during the off-Monsoon season.

Ah talk about the power of dreams.

PS. For those who wonder how such a country would earn enough money to be self-sustaining outside of just tourism, check this and this out.