A university illustrates the radical shift in the objectives to which enterprise is being put: it dedicates itself entirely to social enterprise.
With the intensive and sophisticated learning regime that it has developed, the RCA feels that it has a lot to give other incubators. But will it deliver on this? Nesta who is a major supporter of the initiative has high hopes that it can.
A competition is being run by a start-up to find a new start-up that will itself be groundbreaking in their industry, and will be provided with substantial launch-funding, showered with contacts and mentors/advisers – all in the glare of publicity.
I've been reading Tim Harford, (the 'Undercover Economist's) most recent book: 'Adapt: Why success always starts with failure', and I've relished the insights that behavioural economics offers about the real reasons why people make the choices they do.
Consider the possibility of Google and Facebook announcing a new link: not only do tomorrow’s Googlespecs have an embedded camera and phone as well as internet access, but they also have an embedded RFID tag and a QR code tag. Your Googlespecs could ‘recognise’ other wearers and bring up their features and their Facebook, Twitter and Google+ details on the lenses of your own Googlespecs.
The new European Space Agency Incubator at Harwell has yet to establish itself as a new-business community. It has available outstanding technical support in the shape of a number of world-class scientific organisations on the site; and it provides generous funding for technical support. But its business support is limiting: it provides no business mentoring; it provides little business advice - there is little call for it and channels to access for venture funding are at present small in scale.
With the intensive and sophisticated learning regime that it has developed, the RCA feels that it has a lot to give other incubators. But will it deliver on this? Nesta who is a major supporter of the initiative has high hopes that it can.
The annual National Investment Summit run by the UK Business Angels Association, which I attended recently, illustrated the growth of angel investing in the UK and its increasing sophistication.
Weekly confidential discussions about recent happenings; and questions, allusions and comments from personal experience - the essence of good mentoring - might just be what the Queen provides for her Prime Ministers in their weekly audience. Does she have some lessons for current mentoring projects?
Each of the many short start-up boot camps for entrepreneurs looking to create new businesses has a slightly different emphasis, so where might you begin? It depends on how solid is your experience, your idea or your work on it so far (for more see Nesta's The Startup Factories report).
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