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New York Chinatown par Franck Bohbot

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Franck Bohbot consacre sa recherche artistique aux espaces publics et aux paysages urbains. Fasciné par l’iconographie cinématographique, il centre sa création autour du rapport entre l’individu et l’architecture. Dans cette série, Franck Bohbot a pris le contre pied du cliché du Chinatown animé. Ici, pas de bruits, pas de livraisons, ni de rues animées, ou de touristes. Le silence et l’architecture du Lower East Side sont rois. A mi-chemin entre poésie et décors cinématographiques de science fiction, il a réalisé une série nocturne du quartier vidé de son activité, de ses habitants avec comme décor New York. Il en découle un voyage énigmatique, créant un univers pictural et quasi fantastique en pleine nuit.

Franck Bohbot est le lauréat 2014 des International Awards of Architectural Photography http://bit.ly/1vchwU5

Story Fragments by Tomoko Takeda

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Artist and designer based in Tokyo, Tomoko Takeda transforms literary masterpieces works in his series も の が た り の 断 片(“Story Fragments”).
With a bright light on the shape and structure, Takeda cut and carved the pages of books to form complex sculptural objects. The design of each piece is related to the story of the book. By translating these famous novels into a relevant visual work, Takeda gives them a new dimension.

Marcel Duchamp descending a staircase

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Eliot Elisofon, New York, LIFE Magazine, 1952.

Miami Wines by Vlad Likh

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Based in Moscow, Vlad Likh found inspiration in the changing Miami sky and landscapes to design new bottles of wine.

Miami Sunset, Miami Sunrise and Miami Breeze are wines with fruity flavors bottled in three shades inspired by the color of the Miami sky at different hours of the day.

About Vlad Likh http://vladlikh.com/

Questioning The Definition Of Startup

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Steve Jobs often spoke of Apple “startup culture” and the New York Times referred to the airline Virgin America as “a startup”.

Today any small company operating in the digital industry tends to be defined as a startup. Hence confusion in perception, consistence and business models in the startup scene worldwide.

Steve Blank, one of the most influential people in Tech and teacher at Stanford, defines a startup as “an organisation formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model”. The key attribute is not to be a tech company. Neither to be a small company using digital and/or operating on the Internet. The key attribute is a repeatable and a scalable business model.

In recent years, popular lexicon has begun equating startups with tech companies, as though the two are inherently intertwined. But let’s face it. Is Uber with a valuation record of $17bn still a startup or rather a multinational logistics company which generated $213 million revenue in 2013?

Mark Babbitt, CEO at YouTern, an online community focusing on careers management, expanded Steve Blank’s definition stating a startup is “an entrepreneurial-driven organisation formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model”. The Entrepreneur enters into the equation.

Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement, included an entrepreneurial management paradigm for new ventures. Inspired by the Japanese car manufacturer Toyota, Lean thinking has radically altered the way supply chains and production systems are run. The Lean Startup is conceived as an entrepreneurial management assess tool through a validation learning process based upon Customer Development.

For Eric Ries, if according to Steve Blank’s definition a startup is an organisation it thus requires tailored management tools specifically geared to its context of extreme uncertainty. The Lean Startup addresses this issue.

A startup may also be defined as an innovative venture. Does a startup need to be innovative or disruptive to be qualified as a startup? Innovation or disruption are not conditions per se but are likely induced by the scalable and repeatable business model requirement. Innovation and disruption enable critical growth and scalability but are not mandatory to be qualified as a startup.

So, what constitutes a startup? A repeatable and scalable business model? An entrepreneurial-driven organisation? A company that handles extreme uncertainty? A new entrepreneurial management paradigm for innovative ventures?

What do you think?

Mademoiselle Swan and Le Corbusier

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Innovation > Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths

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Common sense in Economics claims that the role of the State is to overcome market failures and protect competition. According to this, public intervention is not justified unless private agents are unable to produce a satisfactory outcome for all. The drive for initiative and dynamism would belong to the private sector, whereas the State unduly protects special interests, produces absurd and penalizing regulations for entrepreneurship by wasting resources that could be better used by private firms.

These arguments emerge regularly in discussions on innovation and disruption. The “Knowledge Economy” has produced a Schumpeterian Hero. The Entrepreneur has become the central pivot of economic development by taking risks to create new products and jobs that require Venture Capital and a light regulatory framework. This entrepreneurial culture has fostered the development and the myth of the Silicon Valley.

In a recent study (1), Mariana Mazzucato, Professor of Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex, shows how this myth of the Silicon Valley propagates a distorted view of the respective roles of the public sector and private firms in the innovation process. Because the genuine Entrepreneur taking risks and exploring unknown territories in the Internet, Nanotechnologies or Biotechnologies has always been the public sector.

There are no radical innovation in which the State has not played a leading role, not only as funder of the basic research, but also as an innovator. Venture capital is assumed to be the essential ingredient of innovation in the myth of the Silicon Valley. But VC always intervenes after previous public investments and when technological risks have significantly decreased whereas profit opportunities have increased accordingly.

Private firms regularly benefit from what the public research has previously discovered. A striking example is the Apple iPhone. Actions and funding from the State can actually be found in all patents that make this smartphone “smart”.

Between 1993 and 2004, 75% of new molecular entities approved in the US were issued from public research.

Would the Silicon Valley be this innovation Lab without the needs in telecommunications and transistors of the US Navy in San Francisco? What history, data and figures teach us has nothing to do with myth of young entrepreneurs starting from scratch in their garage. The Dark Matter created by the public sector was accessible and ready to be transformed into a viable business model.

The reality is that Innovation raises from ecosystems where public sector and private companies are co-operators and co-creators.

Industrial and innovation policies drawing the consequences of this observation should give public intervention a central place, nor as a proof of market failures or a guardian of free competition, but as creator of innovative and disruptive technologies.

 (1) “The Entrepreneurial State. Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths “, Anthem Press, London

French Tech, Capital Risque, Directive et Clarifications

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Un article paru dans La Tribune hier a semé le trouble dans la twittosphère des investisseurs et autres Business Angels français. Cet article intitulé “La French Tech mise en danger par une directive européenne” (1) dit en substance que l’initiative French Tech est anéantie par les dispositions d’une directive européenne  prévoyant  une procédure d’agrément auprès de l’Autorité des Marchés Financiers pour tous les fonds d’investissement. Notamment, les mesures prudentielles nécessaires à cet agrément rendraient inévitablement moins agiles les fonds investissant dans les start-ups. La Tribune affirme ainsi que les mesures nationales issues de la directive AIFM anéantissent l’initiative French Tech en imposant une procédure d’agrément à tous les investisseurs français.

Ce que La Tribune oublie de préciser est que cette procédure d’agrément est certes obligatoire pour les fonds d’investissement tels que listés à l’article L214-24, II du Code monétaire et financier (2) mais qu’elle ne constitue qu’une option pour les fonds d’investissement qui ne sont pas listés au II de cet article. Il en est ainsi des Sociétés de Capital Risque (SCR) qui sont au sens du droit français des “Autres Fonds d’Investissement Alternatifs” (ou “Autre FIA“) et qui de ce fait peuvent sous certaines conditions échapper à l’obligation d’agrément AMF. Ainsi, les personnes morales gérant exclusivement des Autres FIA tels que des SCR :

  1. dont la valeur total des actifs est inférieure aux seuils de 100 millions d’euros, y compris les actifs acquis par le recours à l’effet de levier ou, de 500 millions d’euros lorsqu’ils ne recourent pas à l’effet de levier et ne peuvent procéder à aucun rachat de parts ou actions pendant une période de 5 ans à compter de la date de l’investissement initial dans chaque fonds; et,
  2. dont l’ensemble des porteurs de parts ou actionnaires sont des investisseurs professionnels,

n’ont pas l’obligation de se faire agréer par l’AMF mais doivent simplement se faire enregistrer auprès d’elle et respecter un certain nombre d’obligations de reporting.

Il convient à ce stade de préciser que l’investisseur professionnel est défini par les textes comme un investisseur qui possède l’expérience, les connaissances et la compétence nécessaires pour prendre ses propres décisions d’investissement et évaluer correctement les risques encourus (anciennement “investisseurs qualifiés“).

Ces SCR et Autres FIA pourront toutefois demander un agrément en tant que société de gestion de portefeuille (ou véhicule auto-géré) si elles souhaitent, par exemple, bénéficier des opportunités offertes par la directive AIFM. L’AMF a le 18 novembre 2013 publié un document de référence accessible depuis son site (Position AMF n°2013-22). L’affirmation de La Tribune selon laquelle “En effet tout FIA, peu importe sa taille, doit absolument obtenir un agrément AMF (Autorité des Marchés Financiers) de droit commun, avant le 22 juillet 2014” est non seulement imprécise mais incomplète.

(1) http://bit.ly/1tm6Tgj

(2) fonds d’investissement à vocation générale, fonds de capital investissement, fonds de fonds alternatifs, SCPI, SEF, OPCI, fonds d’épargne salariale, SICAF, fonds professionnels à vocation générale, organismes professionnels de placement collectif immobilier, organismes de titrisation)