Interview With Zoltan Acs, Ph.D from GEDI on Vimeo.

via Interview With Zoltan Acs, Ph.D on Vimeo.

AH: Why had you decided to move to Chile in the first place?

Arnon Kohavi: I first came to Chile to visit some good friends from business school. They introduced me to government representatives, and I saw a desire from people I met to create a local startup ecosystem. They asked me if I’d come, and I accepted to come for 6 months as a test. My plan for these 6 months was to try to start a VC fund – a real one, which understands entrepreneurs, not just a group of people with a finance or banking background. I also wanted the fund to be big – US$40m – to invest in a proper field of startups.

AH: So why did you leave after six months?

AK: I took off because it will take longer for Chile to reach the tipping point. Good will from the government and a few people isn’t enough to re-create what places like Silicon Valley, Israel and Finland have.The heart of the problem is Chile’s dramatic generation gap, between young entrepreneurs and the old generation. The Chilean society is less dynamic than Asia or the US; a handful of monopolistic families control the country, and won’t move.Worse, these families don’t care about anything the young, the poor… besides their money. They don’t have to: the country’s natural resources copper, etc. are a disadvantage here, because it means the rich don’t need to work hard. The Asian model is better, because it focuses on exporting manufactured goods.

Where will Chile come out on the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index? (Chile was #26 on the 2011 GEDI).

The new data will be released on January 5th, 2012. Come learn more about the results and participate in a fun discussion on the data on January 6th, 2012 in Arlington, VA.

Free and open to the entrepreneurship and development community. Register now.

via Why This Investor Abandoned Setting Up a Fund in Chile.

The startup world in Egypt is beginning to thrive, at the creativity stage, but how many of them survive and become a success is another story. Flat6 Labs aims to do something about this, by providing all the tools necessary not only for a chance of survival, but for a chance to succeed.

Founded by Sawari Ventures and the American University in Cairo, Flat6 Labs is offering applicants the space and time to take a startup from concept to reality.

The Next Web spoke to Flat6 Lab CEO Ramez Mohamed about the state of entrepreneurship in Egypt. While the startup scene has picked up in Egypt in the past couple of years, Ramez sees a long road ahead for Egyptian entrepreneurs:

In Egypt, entrepreneurship is not well defined. People think it’s someone who’s working on his own idea and trying to make it a success. But that’s not what it’s about. It’s about taking a risk. It’s about knowing your target and trying to reach it.  It’s about getting involved, making connections, getting mentorship. It’s not just about funding and making your startup succeed. The term is new to Egypt, and there’s still a lot for entrepreneurs in Egypt to learn.

via Cairo-based accelerator Flat6 Labs launches with 5 startups – The Next Web.

Britain has no digital equivalent of the 18th-century industrial innovators who turned technology into commercial leadership. Its more recent prowess in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology has not been emulated in the digital sphere. David Cameron’s government should ponder this failure and address the reasons for it. Luck is one of them, but so are national and European regulations and a tepid climate for entrepreneurs.

Later, the Economist gets more specific:

Individual ideas and people are the key, obviously, but there are three problems with Britain’s tech ecology that its government could ameliorate. One is the absence of a market as big and homogeneous as American tech firms enjoy. Another is a relative shortage of capital for start-ups and growing firms. The third is the lack of entrepreneurs who combine technological expertise, business acumen and the sort of balls that, in 2006, reputedly let Mark Zuckerberg turn down Yahoo!’s offer of $1 billion for Facebook.

If policy makers would like more detail, they should look at the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index, where the United Kingdom ranked #14 globally, behind Finland and ahead of Singapore. While this might seem like a strong showing, as the Economist points out, a country with such as strong commercial and global history might conceivably score higher.

Unfortunately, the United Kingdom’s worst rank (#21) is on the Aspirational Sub-index — which is exactly the part of the index that highlights the efforts of new start-ups, those proposing new products with new cutting edge technologies, and those expecting high growth. This is where innovation occurs.

For example, on the Aspiration Sub-Index component — New Product, the UK scores a .42 — by way of comparison, the U.S. scores (.59), Israel (.95), and Denmark (.75).

There are plenty of other areas, such as Risk Capital, Internationalization, and use of New Technology on the Aspirational Sub-index where UK policy makers and leaders should look for clues as to why there are few British Bill Gates.

To read more about the Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index check out the book, read a country report,  or a review of the book.

via Entrepreneurship and technology: Where’s Britain’s Bill Gates? | The Economist.

These capabilities are important to entrepreneurial ventures but there was nothing unique to these findings that would separate fashion ventures into a separate category of entrepreneurial ventures. So the next time you are at Target trying to score a Missoni dress or the latest Jimmy Choo shoes, take a moment to think is there really any aspect that separates fashion entrepreneurship from other entrepreneurial ventures according to the findings from Imperial College.

Garreth Bloor posed a similar question in a post, asking “Is Brazil the next ‘startup nation?”. Bloor cites BBC’s technology corespondent Mark Gregory who points out that although not all citizens in Brazil have access to the Internet, those who do “spend an average of 70 hours a month online, which is more than anywhere else in the world.”  Bloor believes that this results in a start-up culture, with opportunities for entrepreneurs. What do you think?

GEDI data has Brazil ranked 54th out of the 71 nations in the index. This ranking is at odds with Bloor, Gregories and the NYT’s, but upon further analysis of the GEDI data there are areas that entrepreneurs might want to assess before packing their bags for Rio.

In the Activities pillar of the rankings (one of the three pillars which produce the final ranking),  Brazil scores 60th out of 71. This is alarming especially upon examination of the variables that create the Activities Sub-Index. For example, the variable of “opportunity to start up,” Brazile earns an incredibly low .02, very few in Brazil start firms because they see opportunities and it is difficult to create firms because the country scores poorly on business freedom. Those looking at Brazil should note that there is little activity there in the medium to high tech sector space (thinking higher end manufacturing, computer systems integration, and other sectors that employ technology). This makes it difficult to conceive of masses of highly innovative firms springing from Brazil in the near future.

Interestingly, Brazil scores higher on the Aspirations pillar, a measure of the innovative, envelope pushing sector of a country. That said, the country’s rank is 53rd, inline with its overall ranking. The Aspiration’s pillar score of .16 is far behind leaders such as the U.S. (.69), Iceland (.64), Singapore (.58), and Israel (.58).

Entrepreneurs should take these numbers into account before packing their bags for Sao Paolo, as launching a high impact firm there is not likely to be an easy feat — but its not easy anywhere is it?

What are your thoughts? Is Brazil a heaven or hell for entrepreneurship? Any policy ideas to help high impact entrepreneurs in Brazil?

For more information of the GEDI and the calculation of rankings used in this post, please click here.