Tinkerings is not a word, I think, that is easily or commonly associated with innovation. And yet! It appears several times on this blog as indicated by the #tinkering tag. And here is the reference to a nice article by Paul Millier entitled The engineer, the tinkerer and the innovator (L’ingénieur, le bricoleur et l’innovateur). […]
I read again The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce for reasons which are not directly related to Silicon Valley or Start-ups. A few days ago, I blogged about an extremely good article from the New Yorker – Our Town by Larissa MacFarquhar. The author illustrates some universal values of humankind through a small community in Iowa. […]
I am reading a new book on Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley entitled The Apple Revolution. I will come back on what I think when I am finished reading it. I discovered in the first pages of this book that famous author Tom Wolfe had written in 1983 another article about Silicon Valley centered around […]
In my previous post, I mentioned this anthology of articles compiled by Loup Cellard and Guillaume Heuguet. Consisting of six articles (5 of which are translated) and a long introduction by the authors, it is a most interesting dive into what this region represents from a historical and political point of view. So here is […]
Here is a short, dense and convincing essay that anyone interested in innovation should read. The subject is nevertheless complex, but the author gives a clear and argued vision of it. So here is my summary or rather selected extracts, because you have to go directly to the text which only takes an hour or […]
So I asked Gates: “What do you think of the idea that we’re not seeing as much innovation and scientific progress as we should? That the rate of progress has stalled?” “Oh you guys are full of shit. Total shit…” This is how Bill Gates reacts on page XI of Paper Belt on Fire, How […]
Degroof has produced one of the best books describing entrepreneurial ecosystems as I have already mentioned in 2 previous posts including Part 2 : Ecosystems & Culture. In the last part of his book, he switches to the impact of MIT and its ecosystem. This is a well-known topic as you could read in Entrepreneurial […]
A Mind at Play is a very interesting book for many reasons. The subtitle “How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age” is one reason. It is a great biography of a mathematician whose life and production are not that well-known. And what is Information? I invite you to read these 281 pages or if you […]
A recent publication by the excellent ParisTech Review draw my attention. It’s entitled Three lessons from Parrot’s saga et you can read the entire article here (www.paristechreview.com/2016/09/28/three-lessons-parrot-saga/) I already posted about Parrot and its founder Henri Seydoux (see www.startup-book.com/2012/08/10/parrot-and-henri-seydoux-a-french-success-story/) and I was lucky to listen to him at EPFL in 2014. I encourage you to […]
After reading chapters 8 & 9 of Elon Musk and after my recent post about the Tesla and SpaceX leader, I am now fully convinced Elon Musk is much more than Steve Jobs. He has brought back optimism to Silicon Valley, to the USA and maybe to the world. He has also brought back hardware […]