We went to a seminar today put on by UCE at Greenhouse in Christchurch on the Future of Innovation. Here is a short summary of what Bill Reichert from Garage Technology Ventures said about the top things learned over his career in Silicon Valley.
Great insights – what can we learn to improve the Start-up ecosystem here in Christchurch?
Top 10 lessons from Silicon Valley
- Focus on innovation (compared to old mind set of a focus on invention) – few in Silicon Valley built their business on the technology they invented,
- Build an unbalanced team (compared to building balanced team) – get different perspectives in organisation and diversity of opinion eg optimist, pessimist, realist. Disagreement is OK.
- Win through collaboration (compared to win through competition) – work with others don’t try to crush competitors.
- Celebrate innovators (compared to celebrate celebrities) – key to good ecosystem is to celebrate innovation so unique culture.
- Failure is a necessity (compared to failure not being an option) – need to try more and embrace failure.
- Assume increasing abundance (compared to assume increasing scarcity) – design for more abundant environment eg cheaper Nokia phone vs build expensive iPhone: mindset shift
- Global open innovation (compared to protecting internal innovation) – need to look externally for ideas and innovation not just within.
- Government gets out of the way (compared to Government driving innovation) – policy infrastructure needs to promote innovation.
- Everybody innovates and everyone copies (compared to where US innovates and the World copies) – easier to share information and trends.
- People trump technology (compared to technology drives innovation) – users need to love product so you have to have more than just a cool technology.
Bonus: focus on creating value (compared to focus on making money) – hard to make it through tough times if only focus on money. Need to have other purpose or reason – how will your company add value?
There are a lot of great insights there and we hope they will be useful for your business or start-up!
