Self propelled economies

We have roughly 200 souverain states on earth, depends on who is accepting which country. The 10 wealthiest countries together represent more than half of all export/capita value from around the world.  The 25 poorest countries do not export anything at all. It appears that the ability to export indicates the level of prosperity. The higher the export volume per capita the higher the prosperity in the respective country.  For that reason we took “Export volume / Capita” as the single most important “Key Performance Indicator” or KPI for a countries prosperity. However: WE DO NOT suggest that we “help” countries to grow their export in order to create economic growth and prosperity. But we DO help those who have made a conscious decision to grow and develop their nation’s economy.

We chose the term “self propelled economy” for an ‘economy development method’ using innovation and entrepreneurship as a way to ignite prosperity. Rather than helping a nation to create jobs by launching foreign tech companies, train and hire the best people, we inspire their entrepreneurs to build innovative solutions themselves.

Example 1 External Scenario (push economy)

Assuming a country with 35 Million people and primary products being split between agricultural, tourism and textile production. Assuming further, that a tech company from any developed country comes in and offers to train 2000 people to become software engineers and computer scientists to later on hire them and maybe others, creating a total of 20,000 jobs in the next 3 to 5 years. The hope would be that possibly another 10 companies would come and do something similar, ending up with about 200,000 people working in high tech jobs, paying a nice chunk of taxes and a first step in prosperity could be seen. It also would mean that roughly 2% of the work force is covered and unemployment rate goes down. Moreover, that soon upper 2% of the population would consume more and keep other people busy as well. It is a great start – no question.

Example 2 Internal Scenario (self propelled economy)

Assuming the same country with 35 Million people and primary products being split between agricultural, tourism and textile production. Now assuming further, that the country decides to stimulate an innovation development program and trains 2000 people to become software engineers and computer scientists and another 2,000 people with rather conventional business education to form 2,000 startups. During the first 5 years they would hire possibly 50 people each, or 100,000 in total – this is only half of the previous scenario, still making some nice money and reducing unemployment rate at least by 1%.  However those businesses would sooner or later start to export their products to other countries. Each product exported brings additional money into the country. And in the following 5 years the growth rate of those companies will most likely surpass the number of people hired by foreign companies in Example 1.

The Big Difference

If example no. one, is highly successful, the foreign company’s success is part of the success story, export/capita and wealth development of the country of origin. The country where they started to setup their business is nothing more than an indirect outsources operation and the value chain leading back to the country, that company is coming from. For our emerging country a nice lift but essentially the biggest imaginable loss: The loss of innovation and entrepreneurship for their own nation. In Switzerland for instance people had been proud that products like Google Maps have been developed in Switzerland and later on purchased by Google. In Germany people are proud of their globally leading robotics company Kuka, which has later on be purchased by a Chinese company. In Nigeria a sales person selling water to Chinese miners digging out copper and gold from the earth is very happy to have that job. All with the same argument: We wouldn’t been able to do it ourselves. Yet, in all cases the macroeconomic loss is not even recognized. While in Scenario 2, the country may “suffer” the slower growth – very much like the developed country before they have been developed,  but in example 2, the emerging country took the most important leap in its history: From self feeding to producing for others – to become autonomous and propelling their economy by its own ingenuity, innovative thinking and execution. Europe’s prosperity is based on innovation that is more than 50 and up to 200 years old. China’s prosperity is based on its ability to produce what Europe and the US had developed at much lower price. California’s prosperity is based on high margin products that will dominate the future.

Over the past 5,000 years, global leadership came and went away. China may become the very first nation in history that actually repeat it’s global glory – but only if they can manage to become again a innovation powerhouse as they have been some thousand yeas ago when they introduced porcelain, gunpowder,  compass, nudels, paper making, silk, the mechanical clock and so on to the world.  And as we continuously embrace: the act of invention is not the point, it is the skill to distribute an innovation and a brand that creates prosperity.

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Back in Asia

After a very successful Asia roadshow in 2018 we are on our way to Asia again, Feb 27 – Mar 30th 2019.
Please come meet with Axel and me, if you are around in one of the 5 cities in 4 countries:

Feb 27 – Mar 5 Vietnam HCMC
Mar 6 – Mar 10 Vietnam Hanoi
Mar 11 – Mar 15 South Korea Seoul
Mar 18 – Mar 23 Bangkok Thailand
Mar 24 – Mar 29 Nepal Kathmandu

With the help of our local country ambassadors, we will meet and have talks with Entrepreneurs, Investors, Universities, Governments, Media, and Innovation Hubs. The main purpose is to exploring opportunities to increase the level of innovation, inspire young entrepreneurs, discuss innovation economy topics and best ways to increase prosperity.

After the first Asia trip in 2018, we began to work together with our country ambassadors and representatives of local innovation groups, some government and academia. The common goal we all agreed on was to stimulate innovation, and the whole innovation process and bringing every country successfully to the global markets, create jobs, and spark new businesses.

Much has happened between our start in June 2018 and now

The first global online event: “World Innovations Forum Kick Off 2018‘
The initial construct of an “AI Leadership Framework for countries”
Researched the “Most wanted engineering skills for the future”
Welcoming the new “Innovations Age”
Described in more detail “Self Propelling Economies”
Many Initiatives, Programs, Events and Insights have been prepared – ready to engage.

And the latest development:
Highly focused, data driven Innovation Classification rather just counting patent applications.

Now we like to invite everyone to join this journey – either by visiting the local Entrepreneurs Nights. You can find them easily on Meetup. Also in each city we will have time to meet with entrepreneurs, investors, corporate executives, enablers and governments.  If not yet done – please contact your  local ambassadors.

World Innovations Forum Nights

February 27 Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-HCMC/
March, 06 Hanoi, Vietnam https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-HaNoi/events/259220407/
March 14 Seoul, South Korea https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-seoul/events/256358412/
March, 28 Kathmandu, Nepal https://www.meetup.com/wiforum-kathmandu/events/258402465/

Looking forward to see you :)

@MaritaR

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Ambassador Role Model Nepal

There is a lot we can learn from Nepal. The very beautiful and sometimes considered mystic country could not have more orthogonal dimensions. Nepal is at the very low end of the GDP list, is unfortunately high up on the list of “perceived corruption”, is a nation with the one of the most kindest people on earth, has exceptional talents, a still under developed infrastructure, is still dependant on donations from foreign countries, yet some extraordinarily ambitious people to turn the nation from a “receiver” nation into a fast emerging nation on the way to become a “giver” nation. When such a country, with a new generation of sheer infinite determination can organise to breed talents working on globally latest technology such as Artificial Intelligence, with goal to turn the nation to prosperity – we must ask shouldn’t that be possible in other countries too. We also must wonder if the combination of a new agile government, highly engaged academia, highly motivated entrepreneurs, all working together – is a superior model of the future? Or will the model of a public being permanently on confrontation course with their government, ego driven groups with nothing but steering up the nation with horror scenarios for their own good and media loving to confuse information consumer for the sake of popularity be the winner of the future?

Khem Lakai – Nepal

While we, the World Innovations Forum, has pretty much all ducks in the row here in Switzerland, a very active community in San Francisco, where it all started, and a very good start recently in Bosnia, great energy in South Korea, Vietnam, Germany, Macedonia, Nigeria, and other countries, our current Role Model is Nepal. Khem Lakai our Ambassador, had by far overachieved our wildest dreams. After our first Meetup in 2018, and a good exchange during the year, Khem understood, it was important to get top technology created in Nepal. Since natural resources are limited and industrial production is not too well developed yet, competition in other countries is fierce, he decided to help stimulate tech development. Together with Ranjan Mishran, a Nepali who is studying at ETH in Zurich they inspired a team of PhDs from Zürich and other Universities to come to Nepal. The Swiss Embassy in Nepal immediately recognized the importance and supported his actions.

Kathmandu, Nepal

In nearly no time, students in Nepal are being trained and built an AI systems and have been stimulated for Entrepreneurship. With yet another group of Nepali tech enthusiast in diaspora, lead by Prof. Bishesh Khanal who decided to quit his dream job in London to move back to Kathmandu and help Nepal move forward with other very successfully tech professionals and experts in the field of AI. Khem worked closely with various entrepreneurial enthusiasts in the nation, co-sponsored national events with Nepal Tourism Board and mentored youth in politics from all different political parties to raise awareness for a “visionary leadership”:  Nepal is to change the narrative of poor and sorry nation to a successful strong nation.

 

Premier Minister Khadga Prasad Oli of Nepal with World Innovations Forum Chairman Axel Schultze.

A few months later they invited Axel to speak with the Prime Minister Oli about the World Innovations Forum’s overall plans and also having talks with their Finance Minister Dr. Khatiwada. The power play continues this year with a first International Investors Summit in Nepal. Now Axel is preparing to attract international startup investors from the US, Germany, UK, Switzerland and maybe a few other countries to Nepal. While the country is still perceived as a rather corrupt nation, we see already Nepali Finance Minister starting to bring the legal framework in alignment with International expectations. The extraordinary journey is just in the beginning.

Khem Lakai, the World Innovations Forum Ambassador, together with his connections and a very ambitious country is making the sheer impossible a reality. It’s the concerted effort with an exceptional leadership that made this work. It was only a spark of inspiration from the World Innovations Forum,  yet the highly focused, ambitious and self determined Khem Lakai did what he felt is right for Nepal, connected with likeminded people and relentlessly executed. It’s that mindset and the understanding what really makes sense for the larger part of a country that moves mountains. In the meantime a new innovation lab is in the making. Also a collaboration between another Swiss university with a Nepali University is considered to create an exchange between some top Nepali talents and Swiss talents to also shorten the distance between cultures.

Its the right time for the right action with the right people that makes a change possible. This is the spirit the World Innovations Forum is trying to embrace. Our most sincere THANK YOU to Khem and his team of equally ambitious team of exceptional people like Ranjan Mishran, Prof. Bishesh Khanal and many others to build this World Innovations Forum poster child.

Even though Khem is the prototype of a self starter, let us inspire all of you to do what is best for your country as every country is in a different situation. But we are all one world – together.

@MaritaR

 

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Autonomous Machines – where are we today? Who may advance the most?

We came a long way in the last 1 and 1/2 years since this amazing video from Maurice Conti was recorded. Artificial Intelligence made huge progress. The hardware however is actually much behind the hopes. Autonomous machines like robots lack the skills to move like humans or animals. Other autonomous machines like cars or ships still lack the all encompassing sensor technology to be truly safe. Autonomous earth bound autonomous machines like chat bots and game computing however show great evolution in their hardware technology.

The software advances are more significant: AlphaGoZero was beating AlphaGo 100 to 0 – meaning the amazing AlphaGo program, which was beating the number one Go player in the world 4:1 was now beaten 100:0 by its next generation AM. The critical part of that story is that it was able to learn everything on its own. Chinese President Xi Jinpen announced his goal to be AI leader by 2030. German Economy & Science departments expressed their desire to make AI made in Germany a globally known quality brand for AI by 2030. Approximately 1.000 times as many regular people on the street became aware of a possible social shift in mankind. grander than anything we experienced or even imagined before. Fear however is spreading at almost alarming rate now – not a place we should be in. But it’s only indirectly the fear from machines. Deep inside our subconsciousness it is the fear of our own miss doing. Not our imperfection but doing things that are simply not right – and doing so in full awareness. Outside the technology and opportunity realm, we began to learn more from the AI development about ourselves than ever before.

How important is technology for AI?

In my work on that subject, I recently had an interesting thought. Mainly when I heard that the two vocal contender China and Germany longing for attention, I asked myself what they have to bring to the party. Today’s AI leader is clearly from California. But is technology really at the core of AI? Yes, we need powerful processors and lots of memory. But AI is no longer really about technology per see. At the core of any AI system are the algorithms, complex mathematical constructs that can describe a behavior, a process, and create results for possible more algorithms. Both Germans and Chinese are pretty good at that. Further more AI is equally dependent (today) on neural network skills. A structure where lots of data get feed in, and spill out results or even directives to other algorithms. Decision making procedures are other skills AI need to employ to create meaningful results. All these skills can be found widely in Germany and Switzerland.

Sooner or later all engineers will notice that no matter how much computing power they have it will never be enough. The game of GO is a great example. The number of possible moves from start to finish is said to exceed the number of atoms in the observable universe. Any AM (Autonomous Machine) will need to calculate its best result or step to a result based on the most probable right step, accepting it may not be the best. AMs need to be FAILURE TOLERANT. With that, an AI system actually gets closer to us humans. I’ve met AI researcher in Taiwan working especially on that part of the process.

But here comes – by far – the most challenging part of AI development that is actually useful for people: What questions do we have to have an AM answer it profoundly and efficient. To make AMs do repeatable jobs like in a production company, or repeatably answer questions, even millions of different questions, from customers in a pre-sales department, or answer questions from patience regarding their possible illness. that is not so complicated. But to answer the question: “How can we help politicians, make the right decisions that are in the interest of the population – and – taking long term effects into consideration?”. Most of us do not (yet) have a firm answer. Most of us, including me can’t even articulate that question comprehensive enough for any system or human to trigger the right solution finding process. Now that is an area where Central Europeans, including Germans are actually pretty good at – maybe better than others.

Artificial Intelligence is more about asking intelligent questions to get intelligent results that putting together fine technology.

While I can continue with a few more aspects of meaningful requirements for a great AM solution, it became very apparent to me that technology keeps taking less and less a center stage position and other, social, psychological, behavioral aspects move rapidly forward. It also daunted on my that there will probably not be a single country doing it all or being the leader – it is a global development where the most open minded and smartest people can jointly produce unprecedented results. Brut force leadership by order of a human leader is most certainly failing – even with 10 billion people. But some of them will contribute amazing solutions to the whole.

Leadership Framework

The World Innovations Forum put a leadership framework together to help all countries to get started and advance. Getting everybody involved makes a lot of sense when it comes to, what is said by some, the last innovation humans will do. Most importantly collaboratively developing and agreeing on a common set of rules will make this development much safer. But maybe we need an AI system to guide us through a process that may otherwise be too much driven by ego and self interest.

What’s next

The development of chat bots is evolving rapidly. From clunky little experiments a few years ago, we see great progress and probably have a highly sufficient “chat bot” by 2022 that is so strong and so versatile that it may replace more than 100 million call center employees with the only replacement of maybe a million people training and advancing those bots. By that time governments will have no other choice to tax the productivity of any AM no matter where those machines are hosted and no matter who owns them. The tax income then can be used to start the concept of a base income for those who won’t find work any soon. A whole taxation model will be available in the new book “World with no work“. By 2025 until 2028 we may be in a position that super advanced chat bots can replace many knowledge base systems including Medical Doctors, Lawyers, Bankers, Insurance Brokers, Inside sales people, cashiers and so forth. This may cause an even bigger avalanche of unemployment that my easily hit over half a billion people world wide. Only several million will be needed to review the medical suggestion, the investment advice etc. But will no longer need a time consuming deep dive. By 2030 robotics may have advance to be much more agile. My ultimate test for a robot would be: Successfully perform in three disciplines: 1) Successfully play soccer in one of the top leagues. 2) Climb Eiger North Face or any similar mountain and return safely to base camp. 3) Dance tango with one of the world class dancers (it takes two to tango). “It takes two to tango” has an inhered interesting aspect: unlike most dances, Tango is lead by both dancers with an unspoken intuition. That will kick start another avalanche of AMs performing tasks that have been conducted by well educated humans. With a constantly improved UBI (Unconditional Base Income) by now it becomes actually a desire to replace as many human jobs as possible and give humans the freedom to pick and chose activities they really love and be so good and social in it that there is no advantage to have robots. There is no advantage to mass produce robots that produce art better than humans can do. Art has no better or worst – Art is a human expression not a robotic mass produced expression, even if every piece would be individual.

Autonomous Humans

By 2040 or 2050, humans will rationalize that during the time of the industrialization, they lost their autonomy. No job – no happy live. If you can’t get into a company where somebody is telling you what to do, you won’t get the reward in cash that you need to survive. Or if you do not perform what is expected from you, you get fired. Not today – but in 100 years we will compare that life with modern slavery. How could it be that you – a free person – has only a few hours a day actually free. At least, unlike in the 1800’s you no longer get beaten up or cut off your hand, but still you call it yourself treadmill, you are very happy if it is 5 pm, you look forward to vacation, you have no or not enough time to do what you really would love to do, you may not even have your dream job, you can’t follow your intuition but the job rules and so forth.

However exactly that ‘YOU’, is the one who helped build a world that eventually transform to a much more liberal life, less dangerous tasks and way more pleasant. So nobody following the rules today is/was stupid. But look for the possible outcome in 30 years from now. Learn everything possible including risks and opportunities about AI and AM and only if you can make an educated decision, judge it – as an hopefully autonomous human.

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World Innovations Forum – simply amazing

A 3 day global online live event

Today we concluded an amazing 3 day innovation and entrepreneurship power play. Over 500 attendees from over 40 countries joined the online live event and in local ‘public viewing’ events.

Albania, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, El  Salvador, Germany, Ghana,  Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Macedonia,  Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria,  Mexico, Norway, Peru, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland,  Taiwan, Ukraine, United kingdom, United States, Uzbekistan, Vietnam.

From physical to digital

What’s the secret sauce for the success? The whole event was online. Last minute we changed the whole format from a physical event which would have been only affordable for the wealthy countries to online – and made the access for free for all attendees. The cost to organize the event was significantly lower, we did not need to fly in 500 people – and feel good about the savings in negative environmental impact, carbon footprint and more than ten thousand hours in aggregate for none productive preparation and traveling.

Live Online Pitch from Nepal

Live presentation of a team of scientists who developed a new method to easily test animal pregnancy and getting results within hours. They don’t need any long lasting clinical tests anymore which would not be economically feasible in many countries. Startup winner from Nepal.

The Whole Ecosystem was here

It was extremely interesting to see innovative startups from various industries, tech, biology, health, and more to present. Investors discussed national and international investment strategies, valuation differences and due diligence processes.  Enabler such as incubators, co-working spaces, accelerators, mentors and technology and service providers shared their point of view and how startups from around the world could just go to any space and any enabler and receive help when going global. Government representatives and ambassadors shared what it takes to enter a country and how they can help to make the start and the stay easy and convenient. The 58 sessions in a highly intense 15 minute sequence was a firework of information.

Hot Investor discussion

Investors from all backgrounds explain investment strategies and experiences. Why investing in international startups is attractive but also the obstacles on the legal and taxation side are to be understood. Discussions about valuation, due diligence and what investors expect, how they evaluate and select startups and the best ways for startups to find investors.

Public Viewing of the otherwise global online event

Our ambassadors in Japan, South Korea and Nepal organized global viewing events. The global online event was supported with local on-site events to foster the regional and global community. The Japanese team together with Fabbit, a leading co-working space, organized the perfect show (see below).

Live presentations – streamed around the globe.

Here a startup in Japan is presenting on stage, the event is live streamed to all attendees around the globe, our Judge located in Switzerland listens and asks questions about the presentation. 500 people in 43 countries watch, learn and share.

Going Global – What can be done

Ambassadors from Japan, Vietnam and the team in Switzerland share how startups from around the world can travel around the world and ramp up a business in a new country possibly even within a few weeks.

Amazing Technology – literally from the kitchens of the future

Russian startup presents a new night vision technology, which is very affordable, light weight and easy to install in the next generation of automobiles. Imagine traveling at night and you can watch the scene almost as if it is a bright day.

A new dimension in high tech conferences

There was never any innovation conference of that diverse and complete audience from the whole ecosystem, on a global scale run all online over multiple days. And to be quite honest – most people found it a bad idea “conferences are networking events, it will never work online”. We kind of agreed but we still needed to try (The risk of regretting not trying is greater than the risk of failing). The dynamic of this first little conference is the spark, helping us to completely rethink global conferences.

Where we are going to take it from here?

  • Strengthening and growing the global community
  • Building the necessary platform technology and blockchain for permanent connections
  • Engagement such as discussing individual challenges, questions, ideas, marketing, acceleration, going global and countless other topics.

Please  JOIN  the community.

Thank you, attendees from 40+ countries, S3-Ambassadors from around the world, speakers, investors, enablers, supporters,  and the Society3 dream-team! Also thank you Swisscom for a rock solid 1 Gigabit glass fiber connection directly onto our desk – wow, flawless.

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Global Pitching & Fundraising Training

Money is globally available – just understand how to attract investors. Top tech companies started all over the world. In Microsoft Seattle, Spotify in Sweden, SAP in Germany, Samsung in Korea, Sony in Japan, Acer in Taiwan, Atos in France, Euthereum in Switzerland…

All have one thing in common: The somehow learned how to attract investors, had their story down and knew how to talk to investors – where ever they are.

Over the past 4 years we had startups from all over the planet in our accelerator and 50% got funded (the highest funding rate in the startup world).

Now we are starting to run free pitch events – ONLINE. These live events shall allow any entrepreneur, wherever they are on this planet to attend. No more traveling for entrepreneurs training.

Next training June 5 in all time zones! read more

We envision a world where prosperity is possible for all nations by increasing innovation and entrepreneurship locally.

Since we can’t get every entrepreneur in the world to come to Silicon Valley – Silicon Valley needs to come to the world – for free.

Please help spread the word, in particular in those countries where entrepreneurs don’t have easy access to capital. http://s3buzz.com/ntd5xx

 

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Digitization 2.0

In my previous two blog posts I shared a base view and two examples. In this post I will share some ways to get to a state of the art level of digitization in your business.

As stated in the previous blog post, computerization or digitization 1.0 started in the 1960’s. With rare exceptions, most businesses are fully computerized. Computers, smartphones, Internet and the corresponding software are simply the underlying infrastructure for digitization. In my follow on blog post, Digitization is a mindset,  I described the effects based on the two examples: Amazon and Uber.

Find out your degree of digitization

The degree of digitization today, can also be seen as a collection of individual and unique competitive advantages. If you like to further explore full digitization of your business you may want to use the following guidance:

  1. Think in degrees of digitization?
    – Digitization is not a have or not have. It is a sliding scale from basic to medium, to good, to excellent
    – Can you identify the degree of digitization in your business?
    – Do you have a customer advisory board you can work with to increase the level of digitization?
  2. Modern Business Culture?
    – Digitization is a mindset and requires a modern, open minded and transparent company culture.
    – Do you have an executive team or business owners who don’t want more transparency and rather keep everything close to their chest?
    – Do you have an old style sales and marketing culture that prefers to deliver information only on request and see it as a special value rather than an obligation to freely provide it such as pricing etc.
  3. What is your logistics integration look like
    – Do you still need to manually enter orders, requests or anything else?
    – Are your customer and business partners able to access any record of their transactions online?
    – Can your customers see the order or return progress at any time online
    – Can your customers access business history with you online?
    – Are there any rewards systems for customer activities?
  4. How deep is your sales channel all the way to the individual consumer integrated in your digital presence?
    – Are your direct customers, business partners, vendors, supplier all the way to the individual end user of your products or services fully integrated in your digital presence?
    – Can any of your customer access their own data easily in your system, maybe change their names, email addresses etc? Can they see the products they have and the services they can acquire?
    – Do your customers have access to all the manuals, service descriptions, pricing, spare parts etc.?
    – Do you have a customer community where your customers can meet and exchange experiences?
    – Do you know if your final end consumer is interested in finding out more information from you?
    – Do you have any form of relationship escalation between the end consumer, sales channels, yourself and maybe suppliers of yours?
    – Are customer rewarded when they mention you online on public networks?
  5. What services, knowledge and information can you provide completely paperless?
    – What is the degree of paperless information flow from brochures, to orders, invoices, or contracts?
    – Do you still require a hand written signature on any document?
  6. How many technological channels do you support today?
    Is all the information available on classic websites, do you support mobile devices, do you have dedicated mobile apps, is information exchange possible via social media?

Competitive Advantage

Each and every act of digitization 2.0 should be considered a unique and individual competitive advantage. If it is not a competitive advantage it is probably just a regular digitization 1.0 measure to run your operation.

Obviously the above are only some samples of obvious digitization measures to increase your degree of digitization and creating unique competitive advantages. True so called “disruptive moments” in your business model, network effects and other topics are rather individual to your specific business case.

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Innovation development – a global race

The global race for more innovation is rapidly accelerating – still it is lead by California. Even the east coast states like NY, Massachusetts or other US states including Texas or Florida are still looking at California when it comes to top innovation. And Europe as a whole is far back and so are most of the Asian countries.

Asia the manufacturing powerhouse – not yet the innovation driver

Clearly Asia is on the run for the pole position in the world when it comes to mass manufacturing. Yet, Japan, who was actually the first Asian country with huge manufacturing power, shows a state of saturation, high prosperity and therefor high salary and its competitiveness in production leadership is slowing down. Other Asian countries have a high potential for becoming leading production farms to serve and support the growing population on earth – and with that potential a high potential for more production revenue a high potential for growing prosperity.

Strategic tech innovation still come from the US

However – in the past 30 years – it appeared that the manufacturing power is a very different economic value compared to innovation power. And while Germany, Switzerland, and France boost some of the most innovative technologies outside the US, with their “hidden champions” – it is the US who dominates the global technology space with the most relevant innovations. Relevant meaning technology that if it would be taken away would have a serious impact on the global economy.

Large corporations can’t disrupt themselves

All too often people hope that large corporations can just create an “innovation lab” in order to create innovative ideas – very much like a startup – and bring them to market. But in almost all cases that dream is bursting like a bubble after the innovation was created. When running a 20,000+ people company, each and every employee must run on 90% or better performance in order to be economically viable. If only a few would start experimenting with crazy ideas, the whole corporation me get in trouble. And if an “external” innovation lab brings a new solution into the company, the executive team quickly realizes that the sales organization has no resources to create a market or sell the product into the existing customer base, marketing has no capacity to bring new products to market, support teams are at 110% load and so forth. Corporate innovation is bound to the very same principles like a young startup: permanently under funded, lacking resources, trouble to get initial traction,  difficulties building a brand and a sales force and so forth. Corporations must create very different methods and values to actually make a corporate innovation lab successful.

Government Innovation Programs

Government innovation programs have evolved and we see a huge amount of innovative solutions in many countries. However most of those innovative solutions don’t make it. Billions are pored into startups and great ideas, yet they did not return the investment. An innovation in itself is of zero value. Only of the innovation is successfully brought to market and considered a value for the customer, it begins to create a value for the owner, the participating employees and partners and the economy. Yet, a local product is never bringing a major contribution to the national prosperity. But if the product goes global, the national  contribution to prosperity begins to flow. A country that is self sufficient is probably healthy and OK but never very prosper. A country with a high export rate however creates prosperity from the excess production value. A country with a high export rate from genuine and highly innovative products is the most prosper way for economic growth.

Innovation Economics – We Need To Understand

Here is probably the most interesting aspect of the innovation economics: If 5 countries are highly innovative and 10 countries not, obviously the five countries are much richer than the 10. And in the old thinking of competition, we try to be better (more innovative) then the other countries. But if all 15 countries are highly innovative, all 15 countries are rich and the five countries are richer by serving 15 rich countries than serving only 4 other rich countries and 10 poor countries. Yes, the delta is less and less but the overall economic power grows. Once we accept that model, we no longer keep countries poor or keep people dumb. Instead we keep competing but on a smaller difference. Formula-1 race cars are extremely fast and the winner wins often by a margin of a split second. Unlike 50 years ago where we saw minutes in between – simply because everything was a secret. In Silicon valley we have a spirit of sharing – even the “secret” strategies. Simply because we learned that sharing, openness and transparency is the biggest accelerator of all.

 

 

Five major initiatives for increasing national innovation

Society3 created five major initiatives to increase local innovation power and connect it to a global network to drive a global business:

1) Global Exchange
A global network where people are permanently connected. The exchange / community platform provides users instant access to all members via web, mobile and other services. The objective is to get answer on questions within a few minutes or hours, find new business partners around the globe, compare notes, and open sharing for ultra fast learning from each other.

2) Events & Meetings
While a digital global exchange is the only way to get people from around the world to collaborate and learn from each other fast, people need the personal face to face exchange too. Therefor Society3 and their local representatives conduct national entrepreneurs night events to meet and exchange on a national level and the World Innovations Forum to get together at least once a year on a global level.

3) Innovation Education & Acceleration
Education and acceleration through the accelerator program that we are currently preparing to be delivered online so everybody can participate and soon offline in the countries at local accelerators. Unique about the accelerator is the “knowledge and methods to train what it really takes to create a unique and innovative solution, build a disruptive business model, and bring it to global markets within very fast”. Society3 was named one of the top 100 most influential global accelerators.

4) Global Trading Platform
A new blockchain based trading platform will allow startups and young innovative businesses – even old ones – offer and sell their goods globally at a fraction of today’s cost – but most importantly bridging the gap from a conventional local business to a global business. Lacking the skills and bandwidth to go global is the most significant gap to today’s Silicon Valley’s leadership position.

5) Government & Corporate Innovation Labs Support
Governments and Corporations in over 100 countries are undertaking enormous initiatives to increase their innovation power. At least in the past 20 to 30 years no significant innovation stood out compared to Silicon Valley, which was an orchard just 70 years ago. The Society3 Group developed a methodical approach to accelerate significant innovation development within the respective country. Here the same techniques are applied as in the accelerator program: “Knowledge and methods what it really takes to create a unique and innovative solution, building disruptive businesses, and bring solutions to global markets within a very short period of time”.

Purpose for a global innovation push

Beyond the self serving objective to drive more business as a corporate or country, there is an additional purpose for the global innovation push. In order to eradicate hunger, poverty, and inequality, we as the human race, may want to drive “equality in prosperity” across the globe by creating innovation, entrepreneurship and business development from within the countries rather than external aid. And as a bonus we will see a wave of new innovation from all these different cultures.

 

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Call for Volunteers globally

World Innovations Forum and Society3 is expanding its volunteers network – globally. Society3 volunteers help bring more prosperity equality to the world by helping countries to create prosperity from within rather than aid from the outside.

Society3 Group AG is a global innovation and entrepreneurs network with representation in 26 countries – and counting. The organization provides a global exchange for innovative minds such as entrepreneurs, corporate innovation labs, investors, mentors, incubators, accelerators and innovation officers at governments. It provides a platform for all innovation stakeholder to connect globally and locally, online and offline, and rapidly improving business success rate across the globe.

The Society3 founders team, who lived 20 years in the Valley, decided to take it to a new level and create a digital version for the digital natives. The objective is to double the innovation success rate by 2035 and amplify prosperity in all nations.

We think big, no problem is too complex, no solution too bold, and no idea too crazy. If we can think it, we can create it. We are here to help entrepreneurs make the impossible a reality, for the benefit of all of us.

MAJOR INITIATIVES

1) WORLD INNOVATIONS FORUM 2018

The annual World Innovations Forum event, is held across 3 days this June 12-14, 2018, taking place in Zürich, featuring 20+ countries and international startups and welcoming over 200 guests.

What we are looking for:

· Volunteers available for the event dates June 12 – 14 and for set up on June 11, 2018

Duties and Responsibilities:

  • Set Up (setting up the event space, staging, design, backstage etc.)
  • Entry ( tickets, guest greeting and orientation)
  • Info team (helping attendees to find what they are looking for)
  • Monitoring Event Space (cleaning, organizing)
  • Photographer / Videographer (taking clips and pictures from every situation)
  • Security (watch doors and other important points of access)
  • Universal support for whatever it takes to make the event an amazing experience
  • Tear Down (Removing stages and cleaning up the event space)

You will meet amazing entrepreneurs, investors and innovation enablers from around the world. You will get a unique insight into the world of startups, innovation, entrepreneurship and investments. And it will certainly be a lot of fun too.

We are providing free volunteers training ahead of the task.

You will be listed (unless you don’t want to) as “Innovation Advocate at the World Innovations Forum and Society3“. Feel free to use that title in your CV and on your LinkedIn profile as a volunteer’s position. After a year of support, you will receive a certificate.

Please email us at volunteers at society3 com share what you are interested in and what intrigued you to join.

 

2) NATIONAL ENTREPRENEURS NIGHTS (GLOBALLY)

We are organizing entrepreneurs nights in 26 countries, where entrepreneurs, investors and innovation enabler meet on a regular base. Events are currently held or planned in Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Macedonia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, United States, and Vietnam.

What we are looking for:

Volunteers helping us for 2-3 hours with

  • Set Up (setting up the event space, staging, design, etc.)
  • Entry (guest greeting and orientation)
  • Info team (helping attendees to find what they are looking for)
  • Photographer / Videographer (taking clips and pictures from every situation)
  • Universal support for whatever it takes to make the event an amazing experience

We are providing free volunteers training via an online conference call.

You will be listed (unless you don’t want to) as “Innovation Advocate at the World Innovations Forum and Society3“. Feel free to use that title in your CV and on your LinkedIn profile as a volunteers position. After a year of support, you will receive a certificate.

Please email us at volunteers at society3 com share what you are interested in and what intrigued you to join.

 

3) SOCIAL MEDIA SUPPORT (GLOBALLY)

We are engaged to help young entrepreneurs to give them more visibility on a global scale. To do so we aggregate their latest news and share them in all the countries where we are active in. To support these activities we are looking for supporter who can share content about innovations and engagements in certain technology fields in the respective countries. We are looking for volunteers in Albania, Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Macedonia, Nepal, Netherlands, Nigeria, Norway, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tunisia, United States, Turkey, and Vietnam.

What we are looking for:

Volunteers who have a good online network of open minded people
helping us maybe 30 minutes a week

  • Sharing content that we are sharing in the respective country.
  • Providing feedback on the content and its reception in the country
  • Responding to comments or requesting us or the respective startup to comment
  • Never share content that you don’t understand or you don’t like to support

We are providing free social media training to prepare you for the task.

You will be listed (unless you don’t want to) as “Innovation Advocate at the World Innovations Forum and Society3“. Feel free to use that title in your CV and on your LinkedIn profile as a volunteers position. After a year of support, you will receive a certificate.

Please email us at volunteers at society3 com share what you are interested in and what intrigued you to join.

 

We look forward to hearing from you,

 

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Innovation Vietnam, rapidly growing

We have been in Hanoi, Vietnam, from March 7 to 9, 2018 to learn about Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Vietnam. The Society3 and World Innovations Forum Ambassador, Nguyễn Dũng from BKHoldings, Hanoi’s top Accelerator and Co-working space prepared two packed days with insights about Vietnam and a startup event in Hanoi. The two main cities, Hanoi and Ho Chi Min city compete for attention and leadership in a great way. Vietnamese are very competitive people and power worker.

Innovation in Vietnam

Vietnam is on the forefront of innovation in the areas of AI, Blockchain, Crypto currencies and other areas based on the Russian Education System. Vietnamese universities create great mathematicians and scientists who in turn work on the above mentioned topics. Our Innovation & Entrepreneurs event was having a gigantic 7 meter LED display. No more projector needed.

Co-Working & Acceleration in Vietnam

BKHoldings Co-Working Space is certainly a leading example of a highly comfortable, yet very accessible space for young entrepreneurs to work in. But here is not only a work space but also an accelerator, helping young entrepreneurs to be prepared to go after the business quickly and avoid unnecessary mistakes. It’s owner, a young entrepreneur himself created that space in a way that everybody can easily communicate with each other and still has a very professional appearance. And talking about communication: It’s worth mentioning that all startups, investors as well as representatives from universities or government spoke fluently English. It appears that there is a clear understanding that if one will want to do business on a global level has to speak the global language. We noticed that first in Bangkok then in Nepal – English is the universal communication vehicle.

Vietnam will be represented at the upcoming World innovations Forum in Switzerland as one of the highly innovative countries in the world. We will share some more insights in the Vietnamese Startup World and some top startups from several industry segments.

 

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