Enterprise Garage Newsletter | December 13th, 2015
The Car Revolution
While writing my book Die Silicon-Valley-Mentalität (out in January 2016 in German) I kept feeling bad bringing so often the car industry into the picture, and giving readers the feeling that it's all about cars. Don't get me wrong: I am no car enthusiast. I don't care what car brings me from point A to B. And I hate driving. I find it a huge waste of time for me. But Silicon Valley companies today tackle so many problem areas that affect automakers and everything related to it that it forces itself onto my comparisons. Google, Apple, Tesla, Uber - you name them are all addressing another slice of the problem. And I keep writing blogs about like this one: Why the Volkswagen-Scandal is Germany's Best Chance for a Startup-Boom.
Having finished my Silicon-Valley-book, it dawned on me that maybe this unfolding disruption deserves its own book. And that's what I am doing and where I need your help. I am in the middle of writing the book with the working title
The Car Revolution:
How Silicon Valley disrupts mobility and why your favorite automaker will not be part of the change.
I'll be looking at how the upcoming innovation will disrupt the automotive industry and multiple related fields. For that I already interviewed a dozen people, and I need to talk to more people. Do you have any suggestions with whom I must absolutely talk or what I must not forget t mention? If so, shoot me an email. Thank you all in advance for your help!
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Europe severely struggles with INNOVATION and why this is so is topic of a feature by The Guardian. In search of a European Google examines in detail why. Europe so desperately wants to innovate and have a blossoming startup-scene, but then it is itself its worst enemy. Lashing out against evil American internet companies like Uber, Google, or Facebook, or data privacy policies that choke European startups more than others. Government initiatives (like Industrie 4.0 in Germany) where the thought of startups hasn't even come up, or media (Le Monde, Le Figaro, El Pais etc.) that just don't care about startups are just some more rocks thrown towards startups. And big companies know too well how to harvest government incentives to do the minimum required. Tesla-CEO Elon Musk responded to the question why they ended the partnership with Toyota and Mercedes Benz with their low ambition. They wanted to fulfill the bare minimum requirements for the government, but Tesla is here to change the world.
"Fill out this form" is not what you want to hear for getting innovative projects started. "Legal needs to take a look at it" is a sure fire way to get innovation killed.
All too often this is what corporate innovators hear. That's why it's all the more important that your C-level executives back the intrapreneurship program and get involved on a regular base to smoothen the process.
A lot today is summarized under BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS because it sound so cool. Adam Grant, author of the book Give & Take (highly recommended), elaborates on this humorously in his latest blog. He, being a psychologist, is often introduced as behavioral economists, because it seems to sound as a much cooler job title. Anyhow, check out the latest articles around behaviors, attitudes, and psychology.
Diversity in gender, culture, age, skills, lifestyle, and others are leading to more and a more varied set of ideas. Looking at the dismal state of Japan's economy, Japan's lack of foreign language capabilities, and a culture dominated by males that now even went to basically give up on the already low ambitions to diversify the workforce and management (read more about that here), it's no surprise that innovation and new ideas are not coming from Japan. A pity.
And other countries should not feel good about that either. A very revealing display of the gender gap on executive boards has embarrassed German companies. See for yourself.
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STARTUPS are so popular that they became kind of status symbols. When people showed off their Porsche in the past, you get the feeling that today it's a startup that they founded. So how do you distinguish the startup founders focused on status from the ones with real passion? Just listen to what they say. If they keep talking about the evaluations they got or the news outlets they just again gave an interview, you likely have somebody who does it to look cool and hip. The ones who can't stop talking about their product or service with this light in their eyes are the startup founders you want to hang on.
Today's NSFW - internet lingo for Not Safe For Work - brings us to some machines doing pointless tasks. But by doing so, they are mesmerizing and you can endlessly watch them.
