L’électron libre

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 ...

When facing what seems to be a problem, we nearly always cure/fix the symptoms and not the core issue itself. Distinguishing symptoms from the problem itself is however quite simple. Symptoms, a necessary alarm There is nothing more natural for a person than wait for symptoms to come up so as to identify a given problem. For example, many dentists and doctors will agree that most patients are brought to ...

I know you just read Recession in the title and just want to run away read something less stressing. Just hold it's right there! The fact that there is a crisis, a pretty bad one, is undeniable. HOWEVER people, and in particular entrepreneurs and venture capitalists (VCs) have bought it so much that they just take it for granted. Before they even have felt any damage or impact on their venture ...

In this excellent article published in Fortune Magazine, Chuck Huff (Invention Marketing Expert) and George Davison (Product Development Manager) bring their lights and advice on the key steps to commecialize an invention. To a wide extent, this approach can be applied to business ideas that don't rely on a patent, especially the last part on how to sell the idea/product/licence to interested companies. In brief : There is 2 ways ...