I think that for every health-nut like me, there’s about 8-9 people that don’t care. Of course, they start caring as soon as the doctor tells them they have to, but that’s another story…

One benefit (and frustration) of health-nuttiness is that you start paying attention to a lot of publications about what’s good for you. Often, way-way-way before these things are actually implemented on a massive scale across society (very similar to early adopter syndrome in technology, actually), influenced by mass-media-attention, industry-adoption, and insurers-approval (the big brother of the health industry).

To that effect, a number of health-”innovations” have become mainstreamed, namely:

• Vitamine-supplements in your food
• The use of vegetable oil in (fast-food) restaurants
• (Larger) salads in fast-food restaurants (qu’elle innovation!)
• Omega-3 supplements in your food

The latter is actually kind of interesting, because for years now scientists have noticed a shortage of Omega-3 (aka. Fish Oil) in Western diets and the correlation with heart disease, cancer, arthritis, allergies and other chronic diseases, as well as, less published, depression. Yes, there are therapies against depression that involve significant daily intakes of Omega-3. No doubt, that isn’t the main reason that we now see Omega-3 in nearly every fatty dairy product in supermarket, but nevertheless it is a victory for both science, mankind, and their brains.

Does the need for food-innovation end here? Far from it, read a few health-mags and go travel the sandwich-shops, Starbucks, and all the other places that busy people (over 50% of our adult population) frequent on a daily basis (not to mention school cafeterias!). You’ll see that there’s a predominance of simple carbohydrates (white bread, rice, and pasta, rather than their healthier wholemeal counterparts), greasy meat snacks (with very little in protein-based vegetarian alternatives), and, of course just plain sugar (from soft-drinks to chocolate-bars).

If you read about the rise of McDonalds, you’ll know that in a large part its low priced success is attributed to using inferior ingredients. Even now, I think that any sane entrepreneur in the catering industry will automatically reach for those same ingredients, because there is simply too little awareness of (or caring about) better alternatives. There continues to, of course, be a micro-movement of people—those same people that buy so-called biofood at a significant premium, not to mention (alternative) scientists—that push for better, more responsible food-production. And there is no doubt, enough media-attention about a number of health-problems and how they could be solved. So much so, that, apart from the cost-factor, I do wonder why many of these simple innovations (like whole-grain hamburgers, for instance) aren’t yet here.

Perhaps we just need to shout louder!? Perhaps… I think I will finish that thought of how to encourage “revolutions” in not only health, but also other areas like green innovation, in a future blogpost!

Vincent

My stance is, like a year ago (1, 2, 3), still that software is a tired & over-covered space both in terms of blogging and in terms of starting a business. No doubt there is a purpose to all of it—I’m frequently surprised about how existing software is copied by others and still improved drastically, just by filling in some missing features. But there is also a lot of blogging going on in this space, which makes software-journalism commodity-journalism.

Brainstorming with myself a little before about the tech-space, I split it into three segments: software, hardware, and “superware.” The latter is what I propose for a new area of coverage on Tech IT Easy.

Superware or super-tech is world-changing technology, like space-technology, medicine, biotech, alternative fuels, etc. Having listened to loads of VCs speak these last months, looking at industry-trends, and the current state of our planet, I think that is where we are going. And frankly, writing about software/hardware bores me. I propose that I write something about these new technologies at least once a month—I’ll try more frequent posts, but that area is pretty research-intensive. I’ll still continue to write about entrepreneurship & related stuff, of course.

If you want to chime in on this topic with some ideas (e.g. exciting new developments in super-tech), feel free to drop a comment or send me a mail.

Vincent

It’s funny! Recently, 37signals’ David Heinemeier Hansson gave an interesting talk on finding a business-model for your start-up. He said something along the lines of “It’s no rocket-surgery!” Well, what I’m about to speak of is in fact rocket surgery.

As some of you may know, I wrote a thesis a while back on high-tech start-ups, their strategies of finding funding, and how they interrelated with incubators, a key-component in the innovation-system for high-tech start-ups. As it turned out, not all the start-ups I interviewed were high-tech, which showed some interesting differences in ambition, funding-need, and funding-strategy, but also not all the incubators, I looked at, were focussed on high-tech.

For some, it was a conscious choice; ESI, the ESA-incubator, faces the unfamiliarity in the market with space-technology, and their focus is to promote the utilisation of space-technologies, which is very-very different from the development of space-technologies. For instance, you can use materials or mechanisms used in space-tech in creating products like bikes, which obviously carries far less risk and development-times.

With high-technology, it’s all about making life a little easier, because the market is simply not able or willing to carry the technology- and market-risks that companies (to be) carry in this segment. Of course, this is a problem with entrepreneurship in general. For instance, back in the day, the first *official* VC-fund was American Research & Development (ARD), which collected funds, not from a limited set of institutions and for a limited time-frame, as is common practice today, but instead just opened itself up to common shareholders. Since high risk and high reward are correlated, it attracted a lot of attention, and eventually lawsuits followed from people that felt cheated (most often by some investment-adviser collecting his commission) when the risks proved true. And then VC-funds became more conservative, and less and less commercial money went towards highly risky ventures, like e.g. Space.

Today, most VCs prefer there to be no technology-risk, and many would also prefer for there to be no market-risk either (which translates into a company already having customers, which is generally good advice, but doesn’t work for all companies).

Back to incubation. I consider ESI a medium-tech incubator, and it does take measures, both on the technology-side and the investment-side, to make life a little easier for both start-ups and investors. As opposed to the Erasmus Medical Centre (EMC), which I consider a very high-tech institution, and acts accordingly. Why is it high-tech? Medical patents last around 15 years. Yet development can cost billions, the risk of failure is high, approval from regulatory institutions can take a long time, sometimes bringing the whole process to about 10 years of development-time. So not only is the chance of success low and the cost high, but you don’t have much time to collect the reward!

How the EMC works is like any high-tech institution. Scientists develop a process or product, it is part owned by them and part owned by EMC. Actually, it is very much owned by the EMC, though I won’t reveal the exact percentage. But considering the possible reward is huge, even a small percentage will set that inventor up for life. The EMC basically has complete freedom to do with the technology as it pleases. Often, it will license the patent, sometimes it will sell it, and sometimes it will decide to start and incubate a company.

In this case, still, it holds complete control. The inventor can decide to take part in that process, but essentially the EMC chooses who runs it. It also set up a seed-fund with banks and VCs, of which it also collects part of the rewards. Nice, no!?

Compare that to the ESI. The ESI usually licenses its technology, fairly freely from what I can gather. Their objectives are different, they want to educate the market. They don’t own equity in firms, though obviously there is a licensing agreement in place somewhere. When I interviewed them, they were planning to do something to make seed-funding for start-ups easier, but at the time of my working there, it was basically all left up to me and my partners.

From my research, I understand that the way incubators behave, very much depend on the objectives of their stakeholders. The objectives of the EMC and the ESA are very different. The EMC creates technologies that are meant to be commercial, and is also a cornerstone of Dutch innovation. The ESA creates technologies that are used in public programmes, licenses it to partners, but is also fighting an uphill battle as far the public’s and business-world’s perception of space-tech is concerned; it is simply too abstract for many to care, which raises questions about whether programs like the € XX-million space-toilet should really exist. Of course, when you bring space-tech *to earth*, that changes the picture somewhat.

Incidentally, there are very few successful independent incubators, simply because society considers it unethical for an incubator to exist—either because they don’t understand the kind of service that incubators can provide (nor is there a real quality-guarantee), or because they consider their residents as sub-par to regular, independent start-ups—both topics for another day.

There’s definitely much more to say about this, including the role, I think, incubators should play in (funding) high-tech entrepreneurship, but I’ll leave that for another day.

P.S. I hope this sheds some light on why I still don’t see software (and webware) as high-tech (1 & 2) and why VCs like that world so much.

P.S.2 This also sheds some light (in my opinion) on the media-industry, which others and myself frequently write about on Tech IT Easy. Music is just another technology, with its production- and high marketing-costs, as well as high risks of failure, and the way record-companies deal with artists reminds me a lot of the EMC-model. Food for thought…

This piece was written by Vincent van Wylick, co-author extraterrestrial on Tech IT Easy. The image is courtesy of rocket-surgeons.com.