Three scholars

During these week for different reasons I have found articles and books written by Zoltan J. Acs. I have to admit, that I have not read his work too much (until these last days), but I’m currently overwhelmed with his work. Right now, I’m reading his latest book “Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy” (2008) in which he compiles various articles. 

I know I have read things from him, but I guess I’m now in the process that any research goes through, rediscovering authors. 

Another book, that I have in my desk and it’s an interesting reading, (less academic than the previous), is another 2008 book. “The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By”. This book is written by Scott A. Shane. Many things he writes I have already studied and know, but is a nice way how he puts it. He writes very well too.

I’m also deeply grateful to all the material than my former professor and the secondary supervisor of my master thesis, has on his website. I need to write him, I don’t think he knows I started a phd. He’s Dr. Philip Shapira. One of the smartest teachers I’ve ever had. His notes are coming at handy when I start teaching soon.   

p.s. Today is 8-8-8, and it was the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.

A textbook to teach: Global Economy

Frontpage of one the books I will use

My supervisor gave me the first book that I will be using to teach this Autumn Semester. I will be teaching things related to geography. Because of my background in Business and Economics I will be teaching in the geography group more things related to Economics. 

It’s not the first time I teach. I was an Spanish teacher for more than 2 years in Spain, in my early university years. That was a side job, not related with my studies but it was fun and well paid for a few hours. Then at the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech in the Autumn semester 2006, I was also a TA (Teaching Assistant) for a class that combined Science, Technology and Politics with Hans Klein. But anyways although I a little experience teaching, now I’m really excited.

I think this is one the better things for a PhD fellow to be able to teach other students. Now I need to learn by heart the first 6 chapters.  It’s going to be cool.

Oh, next week I will be in Spain for vacations. I have been really missing it this week with the running of the bulls in Pamplona. Now, let me tell you, that’s a real experience!!

Google Trend speaks, researchers listen.

The other day I met Google Trends, a powerful tool. I think still some unprecise, but it can bring useful info. I started looking at some of the keywords of my research interest, like “innovation” & ”entrepreneurship”,  

We can comment a few things. First, people are more interested in “innovation” than “entrepreneurship”. Even if some of us, keep saying that “Entrepreneurs or Intrapreneurs, We Couldn’t Innovate Without Them” (Mary Key, today). Second thing is that Copenhague and Singapore, are the  most interested city/regions in the world about innovation (Google dixit). Third thing, is that entrepreneurship is much more googled in developing countries. Which makes sense as they have the highest entrepreneurial rates in the world, and are the ones kicking Europe and US. Last thing to point out, that always in Christmas, people don’t care about these things, that’s funny to see in the graph. I always like to see things from a multilevel perspective.  

The experience economy

I looked at other words, but probably the most interesting is “experience economy“. Notice, that Aalborg (or Ålborg), it’s ranked as the number one place in the world more interested in this concept. My supervisor got quite excited when yesterday I saw her that. Of course that is not only my Department that has been interested in this subject, other in Aalborg also do.

So if you are interested in this issue, stay tuned. In fact, the word in the street says we will soon open a website about it.  

The Committee on Culture of the Danish Parliament visit us.

This afternoon the CCDP or Kulturudvalget in Danish, came to visit us. Here in the official website of the Parlament explains about their trip. It was very interesting to meet this people. I was the only foreign, so everything was in Danish, which it was hard for me to follow as my command in Danish is still shaky
So 10 people from this Committee came and we were 4 academics, my supervisor, another professor and two PhD’s (including me).
My supervisor talked more in general about the experience economy and the projects done in Frederikshavn. The Comittee was very interested, and they asked many questions. My coworkers were very glad how the meeting went.
H.P. my fellow PhD student, also made a presentation they liked. I’m including my presentation, it’s a very small one and it had to very fast as the time was almost consumed, but at least you can see a little of what I talked about.
For me it’s very interesting how these people in the goverment, from different parties, are interested and get engaged in what people are doing in their “Kingdom”. I’m very happy to be in a project that it’s important, not only at local/regional level, but national too.

Well it seems today SlideShare does not work. So I will updated it in another time. I have recently updated the RSA Presentation, today I saw 106 people had view the presentation since I put it, too bad no one has left any comment.

My presentation at the conference.

Here is the power point presentation I prepared for the conference. It was really exciting and I meet many great people in the conference. It’s so exciting to find that many other academics are studying these issues. I also enjoyed the atmosphere of Prague.

In my presentation there were 3 other presentations, and I got 3 or 4 questions that I loved to answer. Many never heard about the “experience economy” so it was nice to see their faces.

Richard Florida at Googleplex

Richard Florida visits Googles headquarters to discuss his book “Who’s Your City?: How the Creative Economy Is Making Where to Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life.” This event took place on March 28, 2008

This is an hour presentation. It has been fantastic listening to him. There are many things that I could comment about it. I like the idea of the importance of taking decissions on where to live. I have been also surfing Florida’s site Who’s Your City, and I specially enjoyed the maps sections.

I have to say that the two main critics I had about him have him addressed. The first one, is that the there is no correlation on this issues, as he says in the economic phenomenon things are very complex, ”association” better fits the term. The second thing, is that while looking at the new megaregions, he’s using number of patents to measure innovation. Which I consider with too many flaws, specially at the international level, but in the video he said something: “Using number of patents is quite a rude thing to do, it could have been done better…” 

That by the way, is something that I commente on his blog. I wonder if I could ever influence a 0.01% him? That would be cool.

Intrapreneurship, and its potential to create a fruitful discussion

Yesterday I presented to my group (2 professors and 3 other phd students) some of the ideas that I have working on. It was my first presentation as a phd students so I have to admit I was a little bit nervous.

I think the idea that most caught their attention was the “intrapreneurship” concept. Today I have been adding some things in Wikipedia about it. Well, I have a deadline to meet this May 10 to submit a paper for the RSA Conference. So, if you want to know more about intrapreneurship and how it can be connected to innovation and the experience economy, then read my next paper (next week) and stay around! 

What happens when the experience economy meets the recession economy?

For one month I have been a phd student. One of the subjects to analyze during my studies will be the experience economy, so I have been studying the issue for a while. Reading at the economics section of the newspaper today (like this article), I can clearly see what I have been thinking during two years, a economis slowdown is approaching. I did not know how big is going to be, in fact nobody knows, but things might get serious. I mean is quite distressing, for example the stocks of Sturbucks (the  most repeated example about experience economy), falling to 15$ a share when it was almost 40$ 2 years ago. Of course, the stockmarket it’s not a place to measure the experience economy, is just an example.

So it kept me thinking. How is this economic downturn going to affect the experience economy? I have been recently surfing the net for answers and I found people in this field are also concern about it. Stephanie Weaver’s blog, two months ago, asked the question

“What happens when the experience economy meets the recession economy?”

And invited several important people to answer as guest bloggers. Even Joe Pine participated. Probably all have a bias to answer everything will be fine, I mean history experts are not that well paid  But I think they make some good points.

I think this subject can be related with the discussion about innovation. The other day I was watching a small video with the P&G CEO Lafley on innovation and recession (uploaded on April 17, 2008). He claimed something like innovation will always be in their strategy (it would be weird for him to say otherwise), and I think he’s right. In my thinking, Innovation is about surviving, not about making huge profits. Therefore my conclussion about the experience economy, is that business before had to keep their eyes out to improve their business in the fields of products, services and experiences. Now with a slowdown, it would not make sense to forget about offering experiences and solely concentrate in products and services.  

Kotkin comes to Denmark to kick R. Florida

This was my first conference I attended. It was in Aarhus on Friday 4 April, and was organized by Dansk Industri, an organization that represents some of the largest Danish companies. There were more than 100 people invited including Mayors, Kommune (City/County Government) officials, policy-makers, business representatives and some academic people (me!), The guest speaker was Kotkin, a professor from Champan, a relatively small liberal arts college in California. It is important to understand the context of this conference. Last month, the famous Richard Florida came to Denmark to explain and preach his ideas about the creative class, the idea that has made him millionaire, with his conferences worldwide and bestseller books. I participated in a blog of my previous class, and I already commented about what I think about him. To sum up I would say in my humble opinion, that he is a very clever person who wrote what most of the people want to read (in a certain extent this includes me). That is what a make a bestseller author, isn’t? Florida brought many interesting ideas, although his methodology and some of its conclusions are quite questionable. He created controversy which certainly helped him to be known.  While I attended a semester at Georgia Tech, my remarkable supervisor Dr. Philip Shapira, had Florida’s book as one mandatory reading in one of his classes. I used the book to make a class report, about the “Creative Class in Spain” (my home country) with a ranking of the top 10 cities, so I could better understand Florida’s ideas, but that’s another issue. The point is that his ideas were pointed out as blatantly leftist or in other words a Democrat with a hidden agenda.  Many we understand that Florida’s thinking can irritate many groups.

I could understand that the Dansk Industri, could organize a conference with a guy like Kotkin, which went besides “the hip and the cool” and “beyond the creative class”, all ideas inherent to Florida’s work. If Florida is in the political left, Kotkin was well established in the right (many might not agree in both positions I have pointed out for them). Kotkin called the Danish system, a very liberal one, (for clarifications meaning liberal in the American sense, relates to the political left – In most Europe, liberal means to be in the political right side). If you heard and Americans calling the  French or Scandinavian, liberals, you know he comes from a conservative wing in the U.S., if he then says that the most important thing  is the family, or as he called it “the bedrock of the society”, and that all policies should be headed towards improving this. Then you’re 100% sure he’s a hardcore republican. I’m all about the family, but I think it is already taken for granted that families, parents, children, and humans well alike, are the most important thing in this world.

I’m originally from Spain, but I have lived over 3 years in the U.S. and my wife is American, I have lived a year in Denmark, where I have chosen to work and study now. One of the reasons me and my wife we chose to be here, is for the wide support they give here to the family. So it’s hard for me to take the opinion of someone saying that if Denmark does not support the family in its economics and urban planning, like the U.S. does, Denmark could not be prosperous in 15 years.  

In my opinion Kotkin had a bias view of Europe’s society (although he mentioned in the middle of his presentation he studied Latin for 7 years… ) and even less knowledge about Denmark. However he brought some interesting points for the discussion of economics and urban planning. He ridiculed the idea of some cities trying to be cool, he never mentioned Florida, but it was clear he was pointing at Florida’s idea about how “cool towns” attract knowledge or creative people. Kotkin explained a discussion about how some people thought that Florence became a great city because of its culture and arts, he opposed to this idea saying it was the economy which made it a great city.

 

p.s. They served a great lunch!

 

Prudent

I told my supervisor about the idea of writing a blog, and she cautioned me to be prudent with my blogging Also, to only use it as a way to relax, but not to work, which is understandable. Actually, I have many things now to read and specially to write.

I would write notes on everything I read, and for the ones I found interesting, I would upload them here. Soon I will upload some of the things I have lately wrote. Two people had already told me that one of the keys to sucessfully do the phd, is to give the same importance to writing than to reading. Meaning, reading and writing about the same time, and not only reading. So, is in it a blog the best thing to write?

Right now I’m pretty busy organizing and writing my presentation for the RSA Conference in Prague this next month. It will deal with the Experience Economy and the Innovation Systems.