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Meet earl, a niche tablet for the adventurous community
This week I met Earl, a startup that stands out for its differential focus on multiple dimensions. The project stands out extraordinarily in its conception, financing and commercialization. Earl is a special tablet that is targeted at the mountaineering community. It stands out in its conception because it attacks a market segment that seems underexploited…
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Smart City Expo Wrold Congress: what was exhibited on the environment in 2012 (I)
At the end of last year I had the opportunity to attend the Smart City Expo World Congress, organized by Fira de Barcelona, to create a series of articles on environmental and energy issues that will synthesize the most relevant aspects of each session. The thematic sessions on the environment at the Smart City Expo…
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Waze is not just an app
This week, after various purchase rumors of< a href="http://www.waze.com/">Wazefinally the news broke: Waze is bought by Google for 1,500 million dollars. For those who believe that Waze is just an app or do not understand why it can be worth 1.5 billion dollars, I will try to provide some keys that I think are important…
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Smart specialization for the automotive industry: advanced manufacturing, sustainable mobility and foreign implementation
Here is a practical exercise to illustrate an example of selecting fields of smart specialization in the Basque Country. The approach is relevant because this is one of the industrial policy guidelines chosen by the Basque Government for the coming years (see). The exercise begins by choosing a key sector, to then look at the…
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StudyBlue seeks the opportunity between mobility, crowdsourcing and learning
This week I would like to talk about a startup that I have been following for a while ago and whose model interests me especially: StudyBlue. StudyBlue was founded in 2009, is based in Wisconsin (USA), and has managed to pass the figure of two million users and attract $14.9 million in investment to develop…
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Specialize, but intelligently.
European industrial policy is committed to < em>smart specialization as a way to improve productivity and create employment. And, in this sense, it recommends that the regions implement “RIS 3” initiatives that serve to focus resources and public and private capacities in those economic activities in which they have specific competitive advantages at an international…
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Three questions about R+D+I in the Basque Country
I leave you a copy of my answers to a questionnaire about the R+D+I that they did to me for the special “Basque Company Innovation” of El Correo that was published last week. In the paper edition (it doesn’t seem to be on the web) you can also find the answers to the same questions…
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Gazelle.com, buy and sell used iPhones
Gazelle.com is an American company based in Boston and founded in 2006 that helps buy and sell used gadgets, with a special focus on the second-hand market for Apple devices. The company has obtained financing of 46.4 million dollars, continues to expand its activities globally and will double its sales this year, reaching 100 million…
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Invest more and better and spend the right amount
We are all quite clear that “invest” and “spend” are radically different concepts. In both cases it is a matter of disbursing an amount of money, with the difference that in the first we do it to obtain future returns and, in the second, it is simply a question of satisfying an urgent need without…
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The intangibles. The key to productivity and development in the Basque Country
In its last members’ meeting, Innobasque presented the results of his work “Indizea. Euskadiko Berrikuntzaren Indizea“. Despite the fact that it is an unfinished investigation and, therefore, surely subject to modifications, I am going to allow myself a brief analysis and some conclusions of the topics that I consider to be the most relevant elements….