INCUBATORS AND ENTREPRENEURS

Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998
From: Jouke (Jouke Kleerebezem)

Just finished the cover story of the March 1 NY Times Magazine on the Silicon Valley Incubators (esp. the NASA Incubator): "where young men who have just discovered their inner entrepreneur hope to grab their billion-dollar slices of Silicon Valley's new world"

Fascinating read. I'll send you a copy.

But its not about the money, another quote: 'To succeed on a grand scale -- to be Jim Clark or Larry Ellison -- you need the nerve never to be sated by money. If you want to be taken seriously, you must always be new. You must have about you the aura of newness. You can't let the undeniable fact of $400 million swashing around some Panamanian bank account get between you and your next new thing.'

John Doerr: 'I think it is possible that the Internet has been under-hyped', and, 'to create software all you need to do is think. Once you've had your thought you pay a few programmers to handle the details. And once they're finished there is no cost at all. Nothing. You just collect the toll as people download it from the Internet -- you tell me what it means when your cost of goods is zero.'

The emphasis on innovation is fundamental: ideas, models are never too new to be true, software and marketing will take care the next decades or so (until some next major political conflict, I'd think).

Every time I hear/read this (stuff like Doerr's, stuff we know since 1st Bionomics Conf -- 1993) I am _perplexed_ 1993 is 5 yrs ago, when do we start practicing the preach? On a 'grand scale'? Move to BC?

entrepreneurially yours, Jouke

Date: Sun, 8 Mar 1998
From: Paul (Paul Perry)

Just finished the cover story of the March 1 NY Times Magazine on the Silicon Valley Incubators (esp. the NASA Incubator): "where young men who have just discovered their inner entrepreneur hope to grab their billion-dollar slices of Silicon Valley's new world"

Fascinating read. I'll send you a copy.

I like the word/idea 'incubator'. I made some notes this morning on 'school (or community, city) as collaborative filter' and was thinking along similar lines.

Can we think of a school (or a community, or a city) as a collaborative filter?

A mechanism for highlighting and developing ideas, to reinforce and to cross-fertilize?

An immune system to nuture and protect developing concepts?

There are a lot of examples of natural incubators (protective zones): tide pools, crater ecosystems etc. Some evolutionary paleotologists consider long term incubators to be the mechanism of evolution (Gould and Eldridge: punctuated equilibrium).

I'd consider 3 elements as necessary to the containment incubator.

1) the incubat*ee: that which is incubated (or pupil)
2) the incubat*or: the architecture of incubation (or school)
3) the incubat*er: that which incubates (or teacher)

There are many links from this structure to alchemy and embryology. It is also illustrative to compare the latin (dead languages rule!) incunabulum, which emerges from the root: 'swaddling clothes/cradle' and is normally rendered as: 'early stages of a thing'...

The flip side of the incubator womb-thing is critique of the shelter/refuge 'no-fly-zone' as a surreptitious method for keeping people weak and dependent on the shelter giver.

Every time I hear/read this (stuff like Doerr's, stuff we know since 1st Bionomics Conf -- 1993) I am _perplexed_ 1993 is 5 yrs ago, when do we start practicing the preach? On a 'grand scale'? Move to BC?

entrepreneurially yours, Jouke

I don't know. It's not that easy I'm afraid. For every 100 start ups probably only 1 succeeds...

(As artists) do you think we've got much of an edge on the rest?

-- Paul

ALAMUT.COM is artist owned and operated.
Mail: current address.