Tight groups producing innovation

I always look out for this small groups that have the ability to produce innovation. Small, complimentary, based on sweat, merit and trust, they can work as a factory for ideas, but they have one extra, distinctive quality: they can execute. I´ve seen this groups work at different scales, in different areas, and had the most inspiring first-hand experience in one of them, building upon the evolution of a single vision through Hacked by Owls, DGI, Core Security Technologies, Movilogic, Aconcagua... and still going!
When I look at very early stage quasi-companies, this group is what I´m looking for. A group I can look at and see the potential to trascend a single project, a single company, the potential to build and keep building on a vision. Thats what caught my eye when I read this article at the NY times following the careers of PayPal's employees. It cannot be coincidence, although there might be a little bit of inbreeding -if you choose not to call it synergies, that is.

cheers,

EK./

Endeavor

Last weekend I participated as a panelist at Endeavor's 17th Latin American Selection Panel in Saõ Paulo. Endeavor is an NGO that promotes entrepreneurship in emerging markets. It selects high impact entrepreneurs and helps them be succesful so, besides creating jobs and economic wealth, they can become role models and inspire future entrepreneurs. To change the world, this is a lot more than two cents. I was selected by Endeavor when we were still at the very early stages of Core Security Technologies. Endeavor had a huge impact. Equity financing and professional management were foreign concepts for us. Maybe for somebody coming from the US this could sound strange since Americans are born and raised watching the stock exchange performance as we Argentines watch a River vs Boca soccer match. But for us (and many many more in Argentina) that was reality: strong passion for technology and almost zero business knowledge. Endeavor allowed us to learn. It catalyzed our development as a company by giving us access to great people...people who had the ability to make us see and do things differently, people who wanted us to succeed. Thanks to endeavor we discovered words such as venture capital and MBA and thus we took Core sales from $500k to $10M, from Buenos Aires to Boston, from 10 to 400 customers, from 15 to 140 employees. After five years of being an Endeavor entrepreneur, it's my time to help select the Latin American entrepreneurs that are leading the change in our region. Salud!

The man who put tears in the astronaut´s eyes

Space can be arid sometimes. Even inside a space capsule, or a rocket, it can be a very dry place. Or so the first astronauts learned when they blinked.
I had the pleasure of sharing last week´s trip to the Canaries with the man who created the formula that wetted the eyes of austronats for the first time, so they could shed some tears of saudade when looking at the blue planet.
Jesús "Chuy" Zuñiga went a long way from his origins as a chemist to his retirement as Senior VP at Sony, and President of Sony Mexico Centro de Manufactura, where he established Sony’s industrial policy for western Mexico. While he drove Mexican operations to preeminence in productivity, quality and cost efficiency, he redefined the model of Mexican Maquilas to play a more interesting role in the global economy, incorporating true value-added to sheer low cost and production muscle.
Retired, Chuy is now advising canary-tech on its goal to put the Canaries in the map of the global knowledge economy. As he put it in an email he recently sent me:

"Trying to separate knowledge from wisdom is difficult at best. Much of what is driving me presently on this project is “wisdom”. What do I mean by this? Well I know the facts, I know how to move within groups, I anticipate behavioral patterns, my “wisdom” also allows me to better appreciate the human dynamics being played out in our quest to introduce such tremendous behavioral change that will have the Islanders be players in a global economy –an economy where “giants” are tossed around like peanuts-; a highly competitive and complex scenario that moves with the speed of lightning"

If wisdom is a form of digested knowledge, i'd have no doubt that it lays in the gut. But be it 'wisdom' or 'guts', what Chuy has to offer is in short supply, not only in the Canaries but all around. So, here's a toast to the task of tossing giants like peanuts.
Cheers, Chuy!

EK./ (in the picture Chuy and myself posing in front of a museum ship in La Palma)