http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/11/10/start-ups-and-safety-nets/
The countries with significantly higher start-up rates than the USA are those with stronger, more comprehensive, and more centralised social safety nets, along with correspondingly higher taxation. It pays off.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/7211
Authored by Yochai Benkler. Market evidence suggests that unlicensed wireless strategies are becoming the primary approach for implementing wireless communications technology. Actual market deployments of wireless technologies suggests that unlicensed follows the innovation model of the Internet, applied to wireless communications. Licensed-spectrum, by contrast, replicates the telephone system model. […] The most immediate implication is that any authorization for the FCC to conduct incentive auctions, and any plans to permit civilian use of federal spectrum, should include substantial discretion for the agency to provide adequate room for unlicensed strategies to develop new generations of innovation.
http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/technology-chiefs-investing-in-hype-20111028-1mn5t.html
A new Australian survey has found what CIOs think and what they do are not necessarily the same thing.
The new CIO Trends survey by Connection Research has found few surprises in the perennial issues troubling chief information officers in Australian enterprises.
But it did reveal that even though CIOs believe tablets, bring-your-own and cloud computing trends are over-hyped, they are madly gearing their enterprises to embrace them.
Today the Australian Clean Energy legislation package passed the senate. What it does is change the tax system (in line with the Henry tax review recommendations) so that companies/products using non-renewable energy sources see higher costs – this works through to citizens of course, and the other end of the change is compensation measures for them (such as a much higher tax free threshold) as well as initiatives for wider deployment of renewable energy sources. In focus it’s fairly similar to what’s been happening in Europe over decades, moving away from taxing income towards taxing consumption. So in a nutshell, if a consumer picks cleaner alternatives, they’ll be much better off than before.
The opposition is still harping on about it, including vows to repeal it (even though they’ve quietly already conceded that a number of related laws would stay – so if they were to repeal, they’d have a budget hole). I find that vow more of a threat, and very problematic. What business tends to like more than anything is certainty about the environment they have to operate in. Stability. So whether they liked the new laws or not, having them now is a clear state and they can work with it – the laws also create new opportunities for existing as well as potential businesses, and there too having the certainty is very important.
As an entrepreneur myself, I don’t want bet my business initiatives on having a low energy price – since regardless of the above mentioned legislation, the price of energy is going to keep going up, and likely quite significantly. I could, as others have done, go out lobbying for lower prices – but I see that as a less efficient way to spend my time.
Instead I aim to make sure that any business model preferably works independently of things like energy price, but at least works out even with a much higher price. I believe that’s the sensible way to go about it. I set up Open Query before the GFC, and because of its Upstarta way of operating it was in much better shape when other companies and independent consultants ran in to trouble. So the concept has been proven in that respect also.
On a psychological level, I reckon it must be hard to on the one hand oppose something and on the other hand build your business to deal with what you oppose. It’s a conflict that will compete for your time and attention, and from my observations the opposition work tends to win and the business work loses – then particularly if the opposition fails (which is always a real possibility) the business is in a much worse position than if it had focused on dealing with the issues. Somehow the chance of a favourable outcome is grossly misjudged and/or the cost of the business change is over-estimated. Either way, that strategy is damaging. Think carefully before you go such a route.
What do you deal with external change (such as govt legislation) in your business environment, what are your strategies?
Next week, the Open Source Developers’ Conference 2011 is on, this time hosted in Canberra. OSDC is run by developers, for developers, and of particular interest is the low price of $300 for the full three-day conference, also including morning/afernoon teas, lunches, and the conference dinner and Old Parliament House. OSDC shows that it’s entirely possible to run a conference with good speakers, good content, happy attendees, and lots of atmosphere, at a decent price.
This year OSDC has mini conferences and tutorials before the main event, and on Tuesday afternoon I’ll be hosting an Upstarta workshop. So that’s Tuesday 15 November, 1:30pm in the Manning Clark Center at the Australian National University. Given the background of the main conference, I should reiterate here that Upstarta is not limited to Open Source business or even software development. The approach is quite independent from that – so regardless of the target market for your idea or businesses, if you’re in Canberra next week this workshop could be of interest to you! It’s possible to get a miniconf-only ticket for $50, and the Upstarta Workshop is just $20 extra on top of that or the main conference ticket.
First I will run you through the basics of the Upstarta philosophy, so we’re all on the same wavelength. Then we’ll introduce a number of practical tools to assess disruptive viability of an idea (product or service), work out best marketing positioning to not be hindered by competition, and other applications of the Upstarta principles. We’ll see why various known products succeeded or failed, and discuss (case studies).
In the second part of the workshop, we’ll put your new skills to use on both known concepts as well as any new ideas the participants bring along. Please bring ideas in abundance, and write them down beforehand so that you can tell what it’s about within 10-20 seconds. We’ll specifically filter for disruptive ideas (or tweak an idea to make it disruptive) as it enables cheap market entry, pick a few, and work on them in smaller groups. We then recombine to discuss what each group has come up with!
Exchanging ideas and insights, and asking questions, even with people some might consider to be direct competitors, is more valuable than risky. If your idea is dependent on secrecy, it’s probably not that viable.
I’ll also do an Upstarta-related talk in the OSIA (Open Source Industry Australia) miniconf, Monday afternoon.