L’électron libre

I wish that from the start, before starting any business, that I knew the secret of how start-ups successfully become big companies. Of course there are several steps in this process but I want to focus here on where 90% all die: I'll call it start-up pregnancy, right from the start. In French, we refer to launching a start-up saying "Je me lance", which means to throw oneself. And ...

In Europe and many parts of the "westernized" world, people usually have a negative view of the young (or not) adult who's still living with his parents. They'd be perceived as a bummer that just can't get a job like everyone else and still relies on their parents to survive. It's partly true for the entrepreneur profile; clearly, an entrepreneur at his parents house doesn't want to get ...

When you order stuff on Ebay from China for a 1/10th of the price in Europe or Northern America, and that shipping included, you can assume that shipping costs are very low. It wouldn't be surprising if the Chinese Post or the Chinese Government put a lot of efforts to bring international shipping costs to a minimum so as to encourage exports. China has had a long history of a ...

Today, Norman AUGUSTINE, former CEO of the main US Defense Company LOCKHEED MARTIN, came to give a talk at NUS on the challenges that Developed Nations are facing. After introducing with the fact that the technological advances recently have suppressed a lot of distance between people, he went on saying that a lot of work in developed nations is being outsourced. If outsourcing reduces costs for a given company in ...

In real life, this kind of superman usually scares people. Indeed, people don't like to be proven that humans (just like them) can do incredible things when (unlike them) they strongly believe in it and aren't afraid of failure. Tim Ferris is this superman. This guy is probably going to remain my biggest inspiration for 2009 for mainly 2 reasons. #1 : THE ART OF DECONSTRUCTING SKILLS This man's strength is ...

Neither fundamentally innovating nor world-changing, this business idea doesn't go however without getting my support. It's about offering not products or services, but experiences, the meaningful kind. French Entrepreneur Nicolas Ronco started in Manhattan a napping salon. Now you have an alternative to maintain a flexible lifestyle if your job application for Google was rejected. For 12 USD, you get to take a nap in a very comfortable long chair, ...

I want to applause with four hands that I don't have the speaker in this video. Dennis Wixon (Microsoft Surface) brings in this video an approach to predicting the future of any technology. His field of expertise is Human Machine Interaction, but the scientific approach he uses to foresee the coming technologies is really universal. Select a field, look deeply at the evolutions in the past that brought to the the ...

Microsoft Research and Microsoft Research Asia organize every year a conference called "Computing in the 21st century". The subtitle was "New Horizon of Computing". This year's version had no less than 3 Turing award winners (Turing awards are something like the Nobel Prize of computing), the Senior Vice President of Microsoft, and a Managing Director at Microsoft Research Asia and at the same time IEEE fellow (a very prestigious ...

There is a lot of buzz on Youtube on what is referred to as being a permanent source of energy: Perendev or Bedini motors. The mere idea of "free energy" and perpetual movement necessarily sounds idiotic to any scientist or researcher, yet the large popularity of any topic always leaves a glimpse of doubt to even the most sceptical and rigorous scientists. A plethora of videos indeed show motors ...

While sorting my desk I found back a summary that I had written based on the excellent yet simple NSF recommendations on writing a Research Proposal : Twelve Steps to a Winning Research Proposal by George Hazelrigg. To a large extent, this advice can be applied to business proposals as well, aiming for a contest or a grant. Here is an even shorter version: Show you have researched previous work. Your proposed ...