Richard Branson: a real entrepreneur?

Richard Branson is often cited as a classic example of an entrepreneur and indeed his early career would certainly appear to justify this. However, a recent biography by Tom Bower suggests that over the last few decades, Virgin’s achievements and Branson’s continued success in staying rich have had very little to do with being more innovative or more competitive than other firms and a lot to do with getting favorable deals through privileged government contacts.

In addition Branson has used many dubious maneouvres to avoid paying tax in his own country – most of us would be a lot richer if we didn’t pay taxes!

In other words, despite his celebrated rebel persona, in practice he may not be too different to the notorious Russian oligarchs. http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/david-runciman/the-stuntman

Innovation with Europium and Neodymium

Hologram from €50 note

Europium in the €50 note, neomydium in guitar pickups, wind farms and cellphone speakers – interesting examples of innovative use of rare earth elements: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26687605

It seemed like a good idea at the time - Berners-Lee

Interesting article in Wired where Tim Berners-Lee  explains why we need to protect the Web by de-centralizing it.

Berners-Lee's tweet, "This is for everyone" at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London

He also admits that :// wasn't really such a good idea!

Replica of Portuguese tram serves national delicacies in London

A replica of Lisbon’s number 28 tram (original shown above)  is becoming a main talking point in the UK after two budding Portuguese entrepreneurs came up with the idea to create the replica and serve traditional Portuguese coffee and pasteis de nata tarts from it.

The ‘nata28’ mini-tram is the brainwave of Portuguese nationals Jaime Silva and Nuno Patrício, who took an Italian motorised tricycle to Leeds (UK) to have it transformed into something resembling a quaint Lisbon tram.
A coffee machine, a glass box in which the custard Pasteis are kept warm and a till were installed in the back of the tricycle and for the past few months ‘nata28’ has been selling close to 600 of the typical Portuguese pastries every weekend.
Nata28 is now a hit among the citizens of Camden Town, London, and has become a bit of an attraction in itself.

Portugal News 9/5/2013

The place to grow!

If you haven't yet come across this video, it's well worth a look.

It's encouraging  to see the new media being used to counteract the less positive items which have been appearing in the international press during the economic crisis.

CV dos and don'ts

Useful article recently in LinkedIn: The 3 Biggest Resume Mistakes

Some of the suggestions in comments below Rajat Taneja's article  are also worth a look.

Meanwhile, the CV above (found on the internet) has an impressive layout.

Entrepreneurial investors and business founders

Entrepreneurs can be divided into two kinds of business builders: those who actually found new companies and those join and build up a new business early in its life.
Lately some of the big names in the field have been rather unkind to each other in the social media as Michael Lazerow relates in a Linked-in article

Entrepreneurs' difficult childhoods

Although I haven't yet seen any solid data on this, there is some anecdotal evidence that successful entrepreneurs are more likely to have had a traumatic childhood than the rest of the population.
The Entrepreneurs Wound is a BBC radio program about this.

"Strategy management can kill innovation"

3M's  Post-it guru questions the application of 6 Sigma quality and strategy management tools to creative processes:

Teleworking backlash

Yahoo has been telling staff to get back to the office.
Maybe teleworking isn't the future after all.
Read the BBC's take on the story.

Teleworkers report having more time to spend with the family and increased productivity. Photo: Eve Fisher

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/telecommuting--the-future-aint-what-it-used-to-be-20130225-2f10u.html#ixzz2MmmnuKsZ

Language makes you poor

A Yale professor’s research suggests speaking English or European Portuguese can make you poor.  

But  speaking Mandarin or Brazilian Portuguese can help make better financial choices!

BBC report:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21518574 

Original paper:

http://faculty.som.yale.edu/keithchen/papers/LanguageWorkingPaper.pdf

Ending Poverty - What Engineers Can Do

Interesting analysis in this TEDx talk from Professor James Trevelyan of the University of Western Australia.

Portuguese innovation

Alcohol-free wine: http://www.theportugalnews.com/cgi-bin/article.pl?id=1156-1

Iconic toilet paper: http://shop.renovaonline.net/mall/departmentpage.cfm/Renova/_238934/1/Gift%2520Pack

Brain power study from the Champalimaud Foundation

Research which could lead to new methods of brain control of prostheses has been recently published in Nature. 

Lisbon researchers in Science magazine

José Feijó and his team have been getting quite a bit of attention recently for their work on the structure of pollen.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/03/110317141410.htm

Android gets around!

We first blogged about Android here in 2008.

There is a nice animation about subsequent developments  posted here.

The Pedro Nunes Institute in Coimbra has been winning awards

Voted  Best Science Based Incubator in 2010

The most recent  was awarded from the international Technopolicy Network at their annual conference in Liverpool in November 2010.
http://www.portugalglobal.pt/PT/PortugalNews/Paginas/NewDetail.aspx?newId={063F4BCA-F9CD-4BEF-805B-5200F787D878}

From IgNoble to Nobel

Interesting to see that André Geim, the scientist mentioned in one my first posts here for being awarded the Ignoble prize for improbable research, has now received the Nobel Prize for Physics for work on the properties of graphene. 

Here Geim explains how big business could prevent him from patenting graphene while here he talks about the serendipitous nature of the discovery.

Bhopal explosion - convictions 25 years later

An Indian court has convicted 8 people from a chemical company decades after an explosion at the Union Carbide plant killed thousands.

The area is still somewhat contaminated although some say that it has potential as a world heritage tourist attraction because of its ancient rock paintings.

YDreams, Canesta to join forces

YDreams have just gone into partnership with Silicon Valley company, Canesta, to combine Augmented Reality with "Electronic Perception" Technology .

Check the video