The Colony of Innovative Startups: A Practical Guide for Policymakers and Corporate Leaders

This book is the result of fifteen (15) years of learning, research, travel journey, and successful case studies analysis about innovation and entrepreneurship in four continents. A journey that reflects the pursuit of views, beliefs, and opinions around the degree of strength or weakness, success, or failure of different entrepreneurship initiatives worldwide. Following their paths in the creation of a positive, and suitable entrepreneurship environment for the development and growth of innovative startups. The main purpose of this book is to provide policymakers, corporate leaders, young entrepreneurs, and academic researchers with practical tools and guidance that may enlighten their visions. A guide that will contribute positively to building a suitable environment for the development of entrepreneurship initiatives, will able them to implement a sustainable strategy for cultivating and growing innovative startups. The reader of this book may notice a slightly different approach used in describing the entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems as the colony of innovative startups. The main idea behind that is the awareness about the current situation of different business climates, and the necessity for such a contribution to solving different problems that hindering the growth of innovative startups, and the sustainability of different entrepreneurship initiatives worldwide. I hope to achieve a maximum of success and growth that will have a positive impact on economic development. The Problem: Entrepreneurship Initiatives Are Popping-Up Dispersed and DisturbedThere are thousands of entrepreneurship initiatives that pop-up like mushrooms every day. You can call them Excellent Polls, Innovative Clusters, Incubators, Hubs, Start-up Labs, Science-Parks, Tech-parks, etc. Initiatives with the ultimate goal to create the Next X Silicon Valley. An imitation effort to reproduce, without a single understanding of the context, the history, the resources, and the vision that led to the San Diego Silicon Valley, home of multi-billion tech-giants. Many concrete examples of these initiatives, which are still subject to critiques and sometimes to controversy, about their outcomes and real contributions to economic growth. Cases from the Munich Smart City in Germany
the Creative Cluster in Australia
Kista, and Ideon in Sweden
Technology Triangle of Waterloo in Canada
the Masdar of the UAE among many others. All these initiatives have different structures and their ways of contributing to the country's GDP are also different. However, all of them have similar goals, which is the creation of a successful business environment for startups. An environment where several startups together with other stakeholders, play a vital role in the development of their national economy. Many of these initiatives are mainly consequences of the principle of Knowledge-based economies. Other are the results of a combination of interactions between different stakeholders inside the ecosystem, following the Triple Helix Model (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995). Because they are geographically dispersed, it is almost impossible to measure the value added by every initiative in a single country. The focus is always on limited targets at a national level. These initiatives are also characterized by limited resources and actors, to cover large scale targets and have a significant contribution to the country's economic development. The Solution: A colony That Consolidates and Reassembles EffortsThis book is not introducing the secret formula to rebuild your own Silicon Valley. It proposes a logical solution to enhance and build a suitable, and positive climate for startups. To consolidate multiple entrepreneurship initiatives in one project, which will collect maximum resources and integrate a considerable number of players. The mainstream inspiration of this book comes from the phenomenon of the self-organized colony of ants.