China is just two years away from catching up on Europe’s level of spending on research and development, a study showed on Monday.

Link (via IFTF)

We lost the workforce war. Will we also lose the ideas one?

Retailers have long developed an art of selling us more by using architectural and placement techniques in physical stores. They put cheap products at the front to attract bystanders inside the store, colorful products at the bottom of the racks so that kids can grab them and start pitching their parents.

This knowledge was brutally useless in the electronic world as in that case success was more about reading Jakob Nielsen and trying to fit a maximum number of products in a 1024*768 screen.

Now that 3D is back on the radars with the success of World of Warcraft or Second Life, it is not surprising to see retailers create shopping environments allowing them to reuse their hard-learned lessons.

In Germany Otto launched a 3D store – demoed back in January at DLD07 – that “offers functions that are not available or that are difficult to implement on traditional e-commerce Web sites, including the ability to see sets of clothing together or dynamically zoom in on image details”.

3D shopping as the future of ecommerce? Probably.

Thomas Mygdal famous quote at LIFT06 (“Easyjet had made more connected europeans than the European Union”) came to mind as I was reading a business week article about the “co-working facilities” blossoming around the world.

The concept is simple – fully equipped, flexible and affordable offices for the knowledge economy entrepreneurs – and it will probably have more positive impact on the economy than most traditional innovation encouragement initiatives. Will European governments take this opportunity to turn to a “hands-off approach to business incubation”?

Business Week: Where the Coffee Shop Meets the Cubicle
See also: easyOffice

Rezonance met enfin a disposition les vidéos des first tuesdays (merci Florent!). Si vous n’y étiez pas, la présentation d’Alban Martin sur l’économie du gratuit était passionnante, et c’est suffisamment rare pour le signaler, fourmillait d’exemples concrets de réussites via les nouveaux business modèles du web.

La table ronde qui a suivi – et a laquelle Geneviève Morand et Florent Bondoux ont eu la gentillesse de m’inviter – était elle aussi très intéressante et m’a permis de rencontrer l’inénarrable Richard Collin (vidéo ici).

So I am not the only one feeling Europe’s potential anymore ;-) The IHT is running a post-DLD article claiming than Europe is closing the gap. While I am quite happy about this kind of discussion, I can’t stop thinking that we are always talking about the same examples (Skype, Netvibes, FON, etc…). That in itself shows that the market is not as dynamic as we would like.

But there are some great newcomers (Polar Rose, Rebtel, Vpod, Sevenload), big names to open the right doors (Varsavsky, Zennström and Friis, Chappaz, Lemeur, etc…) some money flowing in (Wikio raised 4 millions two days ago), and more and more events to put people together. We’re moving slowly, but at least in the right direction.

Further proof is found in the last past of the article:

[…] number of participants at the conference contended that with the quick spread of ideas in an Internet age, Silicon Valley companies no longer have a first-mover advantage.

Gerald Haag, a former Amazon executive who is a founder of Dropshop, a Munich-based start-up for auction sellers, cited a case in which an idea from Silicon Valley was introduced in Europe. Two weeks later, he said, “there was a German version.”

Fast movement. It’s about time it happens around here!

Link

Back at SHiFT I had an interesting discussion with Stowe Boyd about firing client. He told me it happened to him a while ago (story here), he basically cut ties with a client who was not coherent with the direction he wanted them to take, and on which they had previously agreed on.

More than a stunt, I feel like this is representative of a profound evolution in the client/independent consultant relationship that new technologies – at least in part – have brought. Why is it happening now?

• reputation is your the one asset, and a very volatile one in a transparent world. A client not doing what an expert teaches them is a recipe for disaster in the new technology market. And disasters know no borders. Fuck ups won’t necessarily stop at the door of the client and can spread across the web in a few hours. Anticipating this is more critical than ever.

• most of the independent consultants have very light infrastructure – the magic of wifi and laptops – and therefore very low cost. They can live on a shoestring, and this buys them time. And time is freedom.

• most consultants are looking for projects where they can make money, but also learn and drive their value up. Unlike the big four firms – who can’t care less about the progression of their staffers – independent consultants have to constantly care about getting better, and learning is a big part of it. The current assignment should always allow to bill more on the next one. Not much more. Just more, to reflect a valuable experience.

• last but not least, let’s be honest: all this also happens because the IT sector is doing pretty good these days, and all the competent people get more propositions that they can handle.

I really think that almost any business can make money on this planet. It is just a matter of being creative, and finding revenue streams where no one ever thought there was one.

Steven just forwarded me a good example of what I am talking about: Flickr Camera Finder. Flickr – the photo sharing website for trendy geeks – is leveraging the metadata it gathers when its users upload images to build camera usage trends.

Talk about creating value without hurting people’s privacy, while offering exclusive and useful information in the process.

It’s better to be creative than to sue your customers. If only the music industry could listen a bit.

Fred Wilson talks on his blog about how APIs and XML have changed the nature of business development, a science becoming more and more about opening doors (= allowing external usages of your service) and less and less about striking formal deals with specific, established partners.

An open approach vs a closed, delimited approach. Guess who wins…?

Link (thx marco)

I just stumbled upon SellaBand, an inventive new business model for the music industry. They created a smart mix of communities, revenue sharing, viral marketing and outsource talent scouting and financing to their users. Powerful.

How SellaBand works: fans, dubbed Believers, find an artist they like on SellaBand.com. For USD 10, they can buy a share, or ‘Part’. Once the band has sold 5,000 parts, SellaBand arranges a professional recording, [..] managers and producers. Believers receive a limited edition cd of the recording.

[..] songs are then made available as free downloads. Income comes from advertising revenues, which are split three ways: artist, believer and SellaBand. The company will also sell cds through regular channels, sharing profits with artists and believers.

Since both believers and artists benefit from getting 5,000 parts sold, both are likely to actively promote the band (and SellaBand)

More info on springwise.com.

After print, Google is continuing to expand offline, this time moving to the radio space.

I am convinced than establishing a strong online brand is the best was to start in the offline world. Isn’t Amazon the company that is in the best position to open book stores around the world? Who else than ebay to start a worldwide network of classified newspapers?

Offline brands have an edge in the online world. And reciprocally ;-)