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Europe, entrepreneurs and conversations
A few months ago when I was flying back from California into Europe (Portugal, if you’re wondering and didn’t know) I did a lot of thinking about what the difference really was, in terms of business and innovation between the two continents. The answer isn’t really easy, and I’ve posted some thoughts on it before, but there are a few easy points to follow:
- There are less conversations between european entrepreneurs
- Europeans don’t take as many risks in terms of innovation
- US Head-hunting gets the talent out, not in
- Less VC investment to stimulate idea development
It doesn’t take much to give out some practical examples based on these four points:
- There are less entrepreneurial weblogs from europeans (to be totally honest, I only read a few, like Tom Coates’s Plasticbag) and there are few conversations between us here in the old continent.
- There’s less risking getting things out the door in the european IT industry (other industries like design or architecture don’t seem to have that problem).
- Good people get acquired or work almost exclusively for US firms - we can use our own example: over 90% of our client base is from the US.
- Even though the need for (the old kind of) venture capital is slimmer and slimmer every day, it stimulates ideas - it forces people and their projects into becoming better.
So what can really be done?
We’re going to be making a conscious effort to get the conversation going between us here in Europe. There are several parts to this effort and I’ll blog about them soon, but for now the important thing is to get out there and do things, talk to people and create. We’ve been doing our part, and would like to hear about your own efforts. Drop us emails or comments, we want to hear from you, if you’re in Europe and have been innovating.
Being from the Netherlands myself I can really acknowledge what you are saying. We have a saying here:
“Doe maar gewoon, dan doe je al gek genoeg”
Which translates into something like “be normal, then you’re already weird enough”. It’s a strange mentality that is a curse on Dutch (and perhaps European) innovation. For people like me (i keep a blog about web2.0 and am involved in projects of that kind) it’s really difficult to get any conversation with this attitude.
Whatever you’re working on: I’m interested :)
Comment by Robert — March 15, 2006 @ 4:11 pm