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It is with great pleasure and anticipation that I will travel back in Stockholm between the 14th and 17th December for my Diplomutdelning - graduation from KTH: joyful and undoubtedly glistering moments ahead at Stadshuset, even though it still remains to be seen how penguin-like I do look in the mandatory tails coat!
Anyone på stan at that time feeling to catch up? Drop me a line!
I know you may have been wondering where I was hiding or what was behind the (very unstringent) lack of update on this blog in those last few weeks. Well, I was quite a bit busy finishing up my Master's thesis I began back in January when starting my end-of-study internship at Sony in Paris.
After those six wonderful months of discovering, investigating, getting in touch with and living (breathing?) in the European media sector, I 'm delighted to travel up to Stockholm to present and defend my work next week, on Monday June 13th at 13:00 in Kista (have a look at the official announcement posted at KTH).
What will be the topic-of-the-day, might you ask? Quite simply, I have been looking at the structural trends and disruptive innovations that are today appearing in the TV world in Europe - mainly High Definition TV (HD TV) and Internet-based TV (IP TV). What are they influence in the European "big picture" digital TV ecosystem? Can evolution patterns and emerging business models be sketched out of the profound and quicker-than-expected digital switchover we are experiencing today in Europe?
The event is public, so you are more than welcome to attend if you happen to be around (maybe lingering a couple more days in Scandinavia after the Reboot7 conference?). Oh, and expect the report and the presentation slides sometimes soon on this blog. Stay tuned!
I was reading Dagens Industri yesterday on the plane back from Paris, and on the front page stood this dramatic statement: Venture Capital is a bubble (Riskkapitalitet är en bubbla). A very pessimistic article indeed, as it predicts that venture capital firms are "at the brink of becoming the millennium’s first financial bubble". Journalistic sensationalism apart, the situation seems quite serious indeed: as of today, the value of the equity funds Swedish controlled in Sweden almost reaches the overall value of the Stockholm Stock Exchange!
As the article underlines, The Swedish Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (Svenska Riskkapital Föreningen) explains this situation by the difficulty of VCs to find proper exits for their portfolio companies in the "ice-cold" stock exchange (around 180 companies would be in this situation), which instead undergo exchanges and over-valuations between VC and equity firms.
While the article stresses on the political involvement to regulate the situation, its conclusion especially drew my attention, as it defines VCs as "talented young guys who don't want to be in the 'old boys network'". I'm not convinced that such description gives justice to the work they do, but at least it shows the importance of a good balance between them and the "old boys", i.e. industrial buyers.
Yesterday I was at the Sweden - US Entrepreneurial Forum 2004, which was very insightful in showing the similarities and differences in innovation, legal frameworks and capital accessibility in the two countries. Firstly, as underlined by Mario Cardullo, Counselor to the Under Secretary on Entrepreneurism and Technology, US Department of Commerce, taking the entrepreneurial initiative is by essence an individual responsibility, but it is encouraged (or hampered) by the local environment, which should ideally provide:
- A culture of failure: in this respect, we all have to learn from the USA, where (in most of the cases), failing does not blacklist the entrepreneur, but even gives him credibility in the eyes of investors as a person with guts and drive.
- An appropriate tax structure: high social taxes are in this case not discouraging creation as there are less incentive to go out of one's "comfort zone".
- An consistent training: a component quickly growing here in Sweden, both in Stockholm or Göteborg.
Looking back at the different panels, a shared redline was definitely the concept of networks:
- During the entrepreneurial training, with the close clustering of academia, industry and the support state (i.e. the so-called "Triple Helix" model).
- In the management of innovation and technology: to bridge the "valley of death" gap between funded research and commercial applications, thanks to early-stage funding capital to transform ideas into innovations. This means a rationalized and more daring government through specific programs (e.g. SBIR in the USA) as well as a smoother links between them and the entrepreneurs.
- In the legal and regulatory framework in place. For instance, an organization like the Näringslivets Regelnämnd (NNR - Board of Swedish Industry and Commerce for Better Regulation) maintains close contacts with the private and public sector in order to bring forth laws and regulations promoting entrepreneurship.
- For capital formation: importance of Business Angels Network (e.g. EBAN in Europe, BANSEA in South-East Asia...) and other formal and informal gatherings and associations to use the "catalystic" effect of risk capital the best way.
To wrap-up, some food for thought: quoting a panelist, "The space is divided in three - hunters, gatherers, and farmers". Hunters as the entrepreneurs taking the highest risks, gatherers as the investors, and farmers as the managers settling and growing the venture.
Well, as you might have noticed from my lack of real-time posting, there was no wireless at the Bloggforum (at least, none that I could actually use). Nevertheless it was extremely interesting to listen to the three panels, which approached blogs (eller kanske skulle jag skriva "bloggar" istället) through different angles. I especially liked the discussion on how to recognize "true" and "false" information in the blogosphere: as Stephanie pointed out, an underlying parameter of blogs are their use as social aggregators.
"It's hard to lie, but it's harder not to be spot" in the virtual world: tools like permalinks and trackbacks make (most) blogs networked instead of being single, stand-alone entities. When thinking on whether blogs can (and should) be considered on the same level as "respected" traditional medias, one can draw the parallel to the attention Wikipedia has received: can it replace established encyclopedias? Can it actually achieve the ambitious goal of gathering and offering neutral and objective knowledge? I think such questions take the issue at the wrong end, and instead we should see those emergent tools as a great opportunity to sharpen our critical reading.
I should not forget critical writing: blogging isn't just about displaying and forwarding pre-digested knowledge; it's first and foremost an open door to produce knowledge: the first signs of the convergence of complementary publication tools - think Flickr, podcasting and Chatango, can help achieving greater synchronization and information sharing, both on a private level and in a professional context, as to bring a new fresh perspective to Knowledge Management. What's really missing however is the real-time and "on the move" capability, which is precisely why the mobile sector is such an exciting environment to be in (I already mentioned Smart Mobs before, but I can't stress enough how deep and inspiring both the book and the weblog are in this domain).
More than just "moblog" (i.e. pictures or short texts) , it is the promise of pervasive "mobile-blogging" that can actually better connect people and information, both in the physical and digital worlds. Sounds far-fetched? Well it is still as of today, but it's up to us to make it real...
Thanks again Erik and Stefan for organizing the event, and to all the inspiring and enthusiast people I met and talked to at Tranan!
A quick post before I head to the Bloggforum Stockholm 2004 in a few minutes. With 15 panelists and surely a large blogging audience, it sounds interesting.
Now, as it seems there will be Wi-Fi at the Forum, I may try live blogging there :-)
Well almost. At least some inspiring advertisement such as this one I saw on the subway today from Östermalmstorg: a banner promoting entrepreneurship and innovation by advertising the services of NUTEK, the Swedish Business Development Agency - as seen on the (low-quality and unfortunately cropped) picture on the left.
It may seem anecdotal, but I really don't think we would even just consider of seeing similar initiatives back in France (correct me if I'm wrong - and I'd like to be wrong on this peculiar one).
An excellent initiative of the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship (SSES): the Entrepreneur's Toolbox. It's subtitled as "All you need to start and run your own business", and I got one as a lucky student out there. Among other things, it features taxation forms from Skatteverket (obviously something of a great importance here in Sweden :-) ), several Intellectual Property brochures from Patent- och Registreringsverket, bank account forms as well as information about the outreaching activities at SSES and ESBRI (Entrepreneurship and Small Business Research Institute).
Even though jumping or not on the "entrepreneurship-bandwagon" straight after graduation still remains to be seen, I really appreciate such exposure to the actual dynamics and practical steps towards venture creation. Now, one can but wish to witness the same moves to foster entrepreneurship and innovation back in France...
Tomorrow I'll be heading to the Search Engine Strategy 2004 Conference & Expo, organized here in Stockholm by Jupiter Media (thanks Henrik for the tip!). It will be interesting to get acquainted with the latest and hottest in the search field, hopefully streamlined from the hype far too often present in media articles (yes, I did read that Google's capitalization just reached $50 billion, effectively topping up Yahoo!'s mere $48 billion).
For those interested in coming to the conference, free passes to the exhibition are available.
As reported on KTH's website (sorry, only in Swedish), the Center for Parallel Computers (PDC - Parallel Data Center), already known for its already quite powerful previous clusters and its VR-Cube (a cube-shaped virtual reality environment for simulation, visualization... oh and playing Doom after work :-D), is going to equip itself with a cluster which will take the 24th place of the TOP500 - i.e. the top 500 fastest computer on earth (as the list is updated twice yearly, it does not appear on the June 2004 update - but soon!).
The cluster will be built by Dell, and will boast a processing power of 6 Teraflops, thereby becoming the largest computer installation in Sweden - 4th time faster than the HP2CN at Umeå University. Built around 444 computers, it will cost 13MSEK (~1.4M€) and start operation in early 2005.
Oh, and of course the cluster will be connected to KTHNOC, the central Point of Presence of SUNET (Swedish academic network) and NORDUnet (Nordic Academic Network), and a part of GÉANT, the pan-European academic and research network. Which itself means a widely available resource for international advanced research.
Heja KTH!
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