While reading a Slashdot discussion today, I stumbled upon an article in The Economist called Lessons from Apple. Here is (according to me) the most important paragraph:
“The fourth lesson from Apple is to fail wisely. The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple’s original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both times, Apple learned from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent [operating system Mac OS X] have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Mr Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple. The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it: Europe’s inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws.”
My impression (and I can be wrong of course) is that entrepreneurship is revered in North America. So many young and bright people fresh from university have revolutionized the world we are living in. And some of them have succeeded after some very public failures (including a chronic incapability to graduate).
As the article points out, this does not generally happen in Europe. And, unfortunately, neither here in Mauritius…
“The wider lesson is not to stigmatize failure but to tolerate it and learn from it:”
I like this quote. Wouldn’t it be nice if some people bought 2M rupees cars instead of 5M and invested the 3M into some kind of startup where some bright people have ideas but no money?
The country is in dire need of good entrepreneurs especially in the Web 2.0 sector. Elsewhere companies are being created by kids and being sold for billion of dollars after 2-3 years.
When I was a student in France, I did two work placements at Technodigit and Sunopsis, two young startups which happened to be in a Novacité.
Quoting the Novacité website:
Nothing more than an extremely efficient incubator in fact. The funny thing is that when I returned to Mauritius in 1998, I went to see the Minister of Information Technology of that time (it was Jeeha and, yes, I don’t have any respect for him) with the idea of telling him about the Novacité.
Unfortunately, I was 25 at that time and I was naive. I thought that he was going to listen. But I was wrong.
He made me wait for more than one hour and then sent his secretary to tell me that he couldn’t listen to me as he had to leave. The secretary asked me to come the next day.
I came back on the next day and I waited for an additional hour. In the meantime, someone from his constituency had come to invite him for a wedding ceremony and that guy was asked to enter the Minister’s office first.
As I was angry, I told that guy to sit and I entered the office myself. I told the Minister that I was tired of waiting. He replied “What can I do for you? I have 5 minutes…”
I was taken aback. I didn’t want him to do something for me. I was bringing a new concept to him!
I remember explaining him what a Novacité was. I’m not sure he listened. I left his office. And no one ever talked of Novacité’s afterwards with me.
This was in 1998. 10 years ago. In my opinion, this was a missed opportunity for the country.
Of course, I don’t know if Mauritius was ready to have such incubators at that time but, as I already mentioned many times, WE ARE NOT MORE STUPID THAN FRENCHMEN OR AMERICANS. What is missing here is a culture of entrepreneurship and some support.
That’s why I have absolutely no respect for Jeeha. And I’ve not finished with him :-)
So if i got it well, The NovaciTe is basically like the ICT incubator of the NCB??
there are some Mauritian companies doing good hmm..
vinivi (well the founder is french, don’t know if that counts).. posterita..
But i have to agree with you, we don’t have the entrepreneurship culture, people usually limit themselves to having a secure job from 8h-17h, buy a car, get married and have kids :P
btw i don’t respect any politician :)
Maybe the honorable (or rather ignoble) Pradeep Jeeha listened to you, pinched your ideas and came up with this http://www.gov.mu/portal/site/ncbnew?content_id=3cc274368a64a010VgnVCM1000000a04a8c0RCRD
What I know is that I went to see him in 1998 and the NCB Incubator was opened in January 2003.
Frankly speaking, I don’t think he listened to me on that day.
And that’s why I don’t respect him.
As for showing respect to other politicians, Vicks, you should not generalize. There are politicians who are genuine but, unfortunately (but like in all other countries) there are some who only do it for prestige/money/power/etc.
The importance of failure in Silicon Valley has been discussed for a long time.
Here is an article dating back to May 2004.
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2004/05/27/silicon_valley/index.html
quote Avinash: As the article points out, this does not generally happen in Europe. And, unfortunately, neither here in Mauritius…
I won’t say that, :p as i am inspired by a dude who was not that great at school… but yet he became among one of the best sys eng i know :p
you know who you are if you are reading this.
Now as far as politicians are concerned… their main goal in life (if i noticed well) is to get more and more votes and become famous, to catch this type of fish, one must throw the proper bait :p, if you had an idea, however bright it may have been, you are definitely bound to fail to get their attention if you don’t have ‘votes’ behind your back), learnt this from my dad, :p if you can guarantee that you own a particular ‘region’ am sure they listen and they do whatever you want..
but then, am not much into politics, and there’s no way am commenting on a political debate :p
as far as we must fail to learn, this is very very true .. reminds me that i still have to see my semester2 sys soft paper to know where i wrongly answerred to know how to answer more precisely next time. :p
+$3|
” The country is in dire need of good entrepreneurs especially in the Web 2.0 sector. Elsewhere companies are being created by kids and being sold for billion of dollars after 2-3 years. ”
It’s almost impossible to make a Web 2.0 startup here in Mauritius… with a 128kbps connection.
Some very lengthy thoughts:
“My impression (and I can be wrong of course) is that entrepreneurship is revered in North America. “:
Very true, this impression is not only correct but the main reason the USA is still where technology happens: they attract the best brains, treat them as the best and have created the right environment for entrepreneurship, where a great idea can quickly be turned into a great company.
“So many young and bright people fresh from university have revolutionized the world we are living in. And some of them have succeeded after some very public failures (including a chronic incapability to graduate).
As the article points out, this does not generally happen in Europe. And, unfortunately, neither here in Mauritius…”
Your conclusions are true, but the explanation is not the same for Europe and Mtius:
In Europe, the legalese around building a company is still a huge barrier (submitting a patent takes years and needs to be translated into 15 languages and costs a lot of money), the number of grants for promoting entrepreneurship is so numerous that would-be entrepreneurs get lost as to where to start from. Finally, to come back to your topic – the right to fail – when you have started up once, and experienced failure, banks or business angels rarely give you a second chance. And this seems to be the conclusion from the Newsweek article.
In Mauritius, it’s somewhat different: Bear in mind that our country is still a very young nation. The framework for building a business (appropriate infrastructure including reliable broadband connection, legal aspects, protection of intellectual property, qualified workforce, tax cuts, etc) should be there and this is where the politicians should be very proactive. This also goes through believing that 25-years old kids can have great ideas ;-)Being optimistic, I’d say that Mauritius is in my opinion 60% there…and being a small country, can be flexible enough to reach 99% but…
…great businesses start from great ideas: you may have all the required infrastructure in the world but without the killer app, your business is doomed. On the other hand, no matter what the barriers are, a great idea will help you make your way and convince (provided you believe in it yourself).
Therefore, young Mauritians, fight to turn your ideas into great ventures!
If it fails, you’ll do better next time. (BTW, making billions is not the sole metric for success though :-))
PS: An insider’s view about the Motorola-Apple phone failure: this partnership was never really a strategic move from Apple. The ROKR phone was a plan from the then-new Motorola CEO to make use of his relationship with Steve Jobs and create buzz for Motorola. I think Steve Jobs’ interests were more obscure: he saw in it a good opportunity to get the details about how to design mobile phones, and incidentally get the right guys working on the iPhone. As a proof for this: (1) the iPhone has been a registered trademark for years, (2) in 2002 I met one of the pillars of hardware design on Motorola mobiles, in Libertyville, Chicago (Motorola’s Mobile Devices headquarters). Last year, I went there for other purposes, and wanted to meet this guy again, but guess where he moved to :-)?
DON’T TELL ME HE MOVED TO APPLE !!!
:-)
He sure DID!
I, for one, would like to vote for the right to fail.
As a matter of fact I think I’m going to do just that.
don’t worry. they have their fair share of idiots and morons too. although, their grass does seem greener…
YES, 100% with you, the french are afterall.. only human.
Totally offtopic, but great blog and interesting conversation :)
I’m someone who’s planning moving to Mauritius (from Finland) at some point and putting up an it-business there. I’ll definetly follow your blog to get more insight to information technology at Mauritius ;-)