Herve Cuviliez: Entrepreneur - business angel in the Middle East

Posts Tagged ‘innovation’

June 10th, 2008 | Filed under: startup | No Comments »|

I’m working on a project in the mobile area. I love this moment when you just keep thinking / discussing about it.

but here is the big question? what will make the difference ?

Of course, I start to have some experience but frankly it sometimes really hard to figure out what will make that vital difference.

Here is what I’ll try to always have in mind

Insights: my marketing background has taught me that a new service has to be based on a real need or solve something. We all are lazy, we don’t use something because it’s really smart or high end technology, but only because it’s fun or it helps. Never compromise on this.

KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid): as soon as, we have this good idea, our first temptation is to sophisticate it more and more, adding options, etc…
You should do the opposite by trying to squeeze everything that is not vital to serve your idea. that way, you will make a easy service/product to use. If I need to read the manual, you are done. To read more on this: an article of Jacob Nielsen on BBC.co.uk: Web users getting more ruthless.

User Experience: you can the best idea ever if the user experience is weak, you will fail.
that’s where the alpha and beta version is useful, getting feedback not only for the marketing trick.
A good way to illustrate this is the following: In the Internet and Mobile, the User Interface is like a windows between the consumer and your service. The clearer is your window the more you consumer is seeing your service.

Timing: I’m actually reading “the singularity is near” by Ray Kurzweil and I will quote him on this:

Most of the inventions fail not because the R&D department can get them to work but because the timing is wrong

Inventing is like surfing: you gave to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right time hope that helps.

Please, don’t hesitate to comment and share your finding

April 24th, 2008 | Filed under: Mobile Business, Technology | 1 Comment »|

With a price ratio 1:20 comparing to PCs and a vaste majority of the population living with few dollars a day, it’s a no brainer to understand why mobile penetration is 10 times bigger in emerging countries.

For that reason, we will see mobile innovations coming from those countries in years to come.
Want signs of this?
South Africa is about to release a voting system through mobile for local, regional and even national election.
Bangladesh mobile operator Grameen Phone has gave information access (information is key for a farmer, for example. It’s helping him to know to where and when to sell his production instead of relying on local resellers) to poor people through 16 millions lines.
M-banking is the future of banking in Midle East & Africa (Etisalat has released last month a mobile wallet)

I see more and more mobile innovations coming from Africa (see dreamoval), middle east and of course India & china.

Kill cliches about tech innovation always coming from developed countries and remember

from the necessity come the creativity

If you know any others innovations there, please continue the discussion by leaving comments