nuance intelligence

Given current global energy economics and a weak dollar, it’s no surprise that Europeans are investing in US wind, solar and other alternative energy companies. In summary:

E.On, one of Europe’s biggest power companies, said Thursday it will invest the lion’s share of its renewable-energy budget in the U.S. Why is that, given that Germany is the home of fat subsidies for renewables and still the world leader in wind-power capacity? There’s no lebensraum there—wind resources are poor, and offshore wind is still more dream than reality…

And the Germans will have company. Energias de Portugal, Portugal’s biggest utility and the fourth-biggest wind-power operator in the world, told Reuters Friday that it will go ahead with the stock-market listing of its renewable-energy arm this summer despite dismal markets…

What’s telling is that the European interest hasn’t wavered even though U.S. federal subsidies for clean energy are slated to expire this year and have yet to be extended. Historically, the federal tax-credits have been make-or-break for the industry. Now, though, it appears other factors weigh more heavily.

What’s the nuance? This mirrors local activity, including: Continue reading

C.K. Prahalad is a respected author and professor at Michigan’s Ross School of Business. He and co-author M.S. Krishnan are promoting their new book, The Age of Innovation, in several ways, including a speaking tour and a blog in partnership with Information Week.

Their central thesis is “n=1, r=g.”  N=1 means that you’ve got to build products that each customer can customize to their use.  R=g means that resources are global, and you’ve got to have a ultra-flexible supply chain for your business.

What’s the nuance? Prahalad is the author of many influential strategy and management books, including The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, which recognized the economic opportunity among the poorest billion people.

Unfortunately for us (or at least our focus on entrepreneurs), most of his work is focused on multi-national corporations.  This review at Next Billion asks how to tie these new lessons into the global entrepreneurial market.

At the meta-level, it’s interesting to see Prahalad partnering with IW in a blog to kick this off.  I fear these guys will only blog the book into a profitable position on corporate best-seller lists, and then move on to the next idea.  But maybe they’ll learn from Freakonomics authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt, who are still blogging strong on the Freakonomics / New York Times blog, which launched to great fanfare in 2004.

Here are some interesting stories I saw this week, and why…

• Industry Standard: 10 ‘Net Services that Will Succeed and 10 That Probably Won’t.  A new set of choices for the new new new new new thing, most of which I hadn’t heard about yet, and some harsh knocks on buzz darlings Second Life, Zillow, Twitter and Joost.
• Compete Blog: Analysis of Traffic Patters Among Users of Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  Good insight into how these brands differ, based on data about the most popular sites visited by account holders in these three meganets.
• NYT: Feature on Boulder in the Travel Section.  For a piece in the Old Gray Lady, it’s not too bad.  What did they miss?  The 300-person-per-month TechMeetup at the core of the biggest tech entrepreneur scene between New York and San Francisco, five new CleanTech venture funds being started, how close excellent backcountry skiing really is and the wide variety of global leaders who make their living somewhere else, but make Boulder their home.
• Worldchanging: Emerging Green Jobs Market.  Joel Makower has a good piece on the gap between the hype and reality around the growth in ‘green jobs’.  Made me think about the solar panel installer I met at “Green Drinks” last week who said, “for the first time in my life, I’ve got job security, and I’m not worried at all about a recession.”

Enjoy your weekend.

My long-time co-conspirator and current business partner Kevin Johansen wrote a good column last fall that got picked up recently at Entrepreneur.com.

He highlights how the tools at the core of the Entreprenurial Standards Forum provide a statistically-based gap analysis for entrepreneurs.

Data generally finds its way into a database through the application of a mix of archival, collective and “swarm” intelligence. Archival intelligence is about what worked in the past. History, which we are doomed to repeat if we don’t study it, is archival intelligence. Collective intelligence is about what worked today. Collective intelligence is best-practices sharing. “Swarm” intelligence is about problem solving and making things work better.

Building a database–a knowledge archive–of almost any sort is an investment the builders hope to see pay off. In the case of the Angel Capital Summit, a community-wide event hosted by the Rockies Venture Club on Nov. 13, the Entrepreneurial Standards Forum, a Colorado-based nonprofit, made this investment. They did it for entrepreneurs in specific and investors in general. For the ACS, it paid off well.

It sure did.

What’s the nuance?  Our tools radically improved the fundamental performance of this annual conference where entrepreneurs pitch potential investors, which had been staid for over a decade.  Not only was the Rockies Venture Club (RVC) able to review more than 4 times as many applicants, but they saw more companies present, and a much higher percentage (probably a 7x multiplier) receive funding, making it both qualitatively AND quantitatively the best of these events in Colorado in at least 15 years.

Next up is the Colorado Capital Conference, and the upcoming launch of our own platform, the Business Catapult.   Stay tuned here for more information this spring.

Really. I don’t think they’re joking. (edited to add: it turns out, of course, that they are joking. I was fooled on April 1.  Turns out they’re well known for this.)

Virgin and Google have teamed up to send a team of people to Mars “within the next 20 years.”

See for yourself.

This is some ‘disruptive technology’ that transcends ‘globalization.’

Social Networking (view PDF)

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