Innovation Journalism

The Chinese Car Industry is Not a Threat – It’s an Opportunity

2010-01-31T16:06:00.002+01:00

In this Gapminder chart you can compare the infant mortality rate vs the income per capita over time. China is today at the same level as Sweden was just after the Second World War.

It’s only natural that Volvo will be a Chinese company and Saab is transformed to a luxury high-tech sportscar company. In 2008, China surpassed the United States to become the world's second largest auto-making nation behind Japan. And in December 2008, for the first time ever, there have been more cars sold in China than the United States.

Reading Swedish news articles on the Volvo-Geely deal, you get the impression that most journalists, politicians and governmental agencies still picture the country as “developing”. To call China a “developing” country is absurd.

The majority of the world’s inhabitants now have higher average income than they ever had. Unlike a few decades ago, most people today live in mid-range income countries. Half of the world’s population lives mainly in Brazil, Russia, India and China. They accounted for about 22 percent of the world economy in 2008, up from 16 percent a decade earlier. Real economic growth from 1999 through 2008 averaged 9.75 percent in China, 7 percent in both India and Russia, and 3.3 percent in Brazil.
Today, Chinese earn on average as much as the typical Swede did in 1945. It was at that time Volvo car production got full stream in Sweden. It is not a surprise that Volvo Cars today is bought by a Chinese company. Few would claim that Sweden was a developing country after the Second World War.
Even in terms of education, several low-income and most middle-income countries compare with the richest countries. For example you find the world’s best chemists in India, where labor costs also are lower than here. And it makes sense for the pharmaceutical industry to locate their operations where the best chemists are.

Should we still compete with these countries, or should we try to find out what they need, that we are good at? Duh!

iPad – Good hype, Apple. Bad job, NYT

2010-01-30T10:32:00.000+01:00

iPad – 14,800,000 hits on Google. Good hype, Apple.

Steve Jobs showed the New York Times home page in the iPad at the launch. The newspaper had the world’s best marketing opportunity and they chose to do ... nothing.

You couldn’t get a better demonstration of the Big problem in the news media industry. To sell their material on tablets, they have to adjust all parts of their digital strategies. Consumers simply don’t use the tablet’s browser to get the same content free on the Web.

Phew.

The UK IP Office: Creativity and Innovation More Important Than IP

2009-11-07T12:47:00.003+01:00

The UK Government is going from strength to strength. First Hack the Government and now the UK IP Office has published a very thoughtful and critical report on the future of intellectual property, “The Way Ahead : A Strategy for Copyright In The Digital Age”.

The UK IP Office is the official government body responsible for Intellectual Property (IP) rights in the United Kingdom.

Apart from the compulsory background chapter – the history of IP and a description of the current legal situation – it contains a pragmatic and surprisingly neutral analysis of the consequences of the current legal system.

“Technology means the capability to create, use and distribute copyright works is now in the hands of the individual.” (page 22)

The UK IP Office’s conclusion is that the current IP laws have a low legitimacy in the public’s eye and needs to be reformed to get accepted. They also conclude that recent politics and heavy lobbying from the IP industry have undermined the public’s trust in the law’s principle of equality of justice.

“The copyright system suffers from a marked lack of public legitimacy. [...] The system is often unable to accommodate certain uses of copyright works that a large proportion of the population regards as legitimate fair and reasonable. [...] Our consultation has revealed that the public legitimacy of copyright has also been impacted by difficulties identified in the relationship between authors and rights holders, for instance those who do not receive a fair reward from those who exploit their works. [...] These difficulties have a very real impact on perceptions of the copyright system. The copyright system must be seen as fair to authors and users if it is to command greater public respect. This perception of unfairness to authors has wider currency. There is a persistent belief among consumers (as well as among some authors) that authors get relatively little from deals with major rights holders. This seems to reinforce attitudes that copyright infringement is a victimless crime ‘because the author won’t see a difference’.” (page 28-29)

For a legal system to retain its legitimacy, the public must believe that laws differ from politics. Laws must be separate from and “above” politics, economics, culture, and the values or preferences of judges.

A legal and political system whose essential principles, procedures, and styles are created by those with strong financial resources and substantial property, sooner or later will show that everybody is not treated equally.

The survival of state institutions depends on the public’s perceived legitimacy. Most people obey governmental authorities not just to avoid punishment, but because they believe those authorities have the right to make demands and because they feel that complying is the right thing to do.

For the most part, the public polices itself. We feel an obligation to follow the decisions of group authorities and group rules. But an increasing political cynicism has undercut current IP law’s legitimacy. The introduction of HADOPI and other new IP related laws have diluted the public’s trust in the public system as well as the authorities that uphold these laws. There is a widespread discontent with the current system. The opinion is that these laws are not fair. They are designed only for those with money and resources.

“The Government observes that the muscular language of enforcement emphasising theft is unhelpful and problematic. It would be useful for everyone to recognise that a loyal customer base is alienated when the distinction between criminal liability and civil infringement is not made clear. The ‘cooperation not criminalisation’ approach of the Featured Artists Coalition is encouraging.” (page 47)

Our Visby Agenda - a new ICT policy in EU

2009-11-04T15:28:00.004+01:00

The European Union is about to form a new ICT policy agenda replacing the current i2010 vision. They're discussing the most important policy questions for the period 2010-2015 (and beyond) and they need our help to get it right.

Therefore I think we should ask ourselves five short questions:

What do you think the e-society will look like in 2015 and beyond? What has changed for worse and better? (i.e. the role of technology in society, or the role of society in technology)

How would you like it to have evolved? (If you could rule the world)

What do you think politicians should do about this? (what is needed to make sure that 2 is realized instead of 1?)

What do you think politicians should not do in order to fulfill your vision?

Which five other people do you think should answer this meme?

My answers to 1-4 are:

I won’t predict, but I hope that e-society will be of benefit to the citizens and stimulates innovation and use without put democratic values at risk.

An ICT policy agenda should focus on general topics and not comprise different policies for each and every sector or trend in society. There are definitely conflicting issues and a balance between individual rights with those of the public, but in general it should supervise people’s natural rights and ensure that these rights are executed fairly, without infringement by another individual or organization or company.

I’m concerned about most governments’ narrow-mindedness. Today they mostly to stand up for big content owners such as record companies and Hollywood studios. Today they are mostly concerned about restricting transparency and public access to governmental documents.

Most high-level proposals today focus on forcing ISPs around the world to spy on their subscribers and turn them off if the content providers think they violate some copyright law. They only satisfy the needs of those who can afford expensive lawyers and lobbyists. It is not reasonable that the wealthiest people can dictate the laws with intellectual property as a strategic business tool. The rights are more often used to keep potential competitors away, than to protect the value of individual achievement or innovation.

A democracy is dependent on the citizen’s possibility to influence the policy. Without public access to information, there is no real democracy. In societies without transparency decisions are taken behind locked doors. That is a good environment for conspiracy theories, populism and extremism. Transparency and public control is a fundament for democracy.

E-policy should facilitate the growth of individuals, organizations and communities that are capable of managing their own continuing transformation, and not to control and direct. E-policy should put less stress on to know what’s best for a particular individual, community, organization, in a particular place, at a particular time, but try to make the best use of local knowledge and the learning experiences. (That’s governmental speech for “crowd sourcing” and all that)

5. I think these should respond to this meme:
http://karlsigfrid.se/
http://www.erikjosefsson.eu/
http://www.eriklaakso.nu/
http://minamoderatakarameller.blogspot.com/
http://www.bodstromsamhallet.se/

(This meme originated at Our Visby Agenda)

Copy Paste Will Never Die

2009-07-05T20:52:00.007+02:00

After the Almedalen Political Week I feel exhausted by all piracy/copyright debates. But the political landscape has cleared up – and polarized. Most of the traditional political parties are going Pirate Party Bashing instead of taking a serious discussion on the big issue: integrity and how to relate to the inevitable “digital culture” society.

For the integrity part my opinion is crystal clear: a free flow of information is a condition for free democracy, free research and innovation. Let me repeat that: a free flow of information. Even the OECD has agreed on that at the 2008 conference “The Seoul Declaration for the Future of the Internet Economy”: The further expansion of the Internet Economy will bolster the free flow of information, freedom of expression, and protection of individual liberties, as critical components of a democratic society and cultural diversity.

The inability among policy makers like President Nicholas Sarkozy or the Swedish Moderate Party to understand that is alarming. Eric Besson, Minister of State for the Development of the Digital Economy in France, was one of the key speakers at OECD conference. Hello!!?!

We live in a world in which the copy predominates, evading all attempts to outlaw it. There are today 130 million total works estimated under the Creative Commons license. Most of those creative works are remixes and mashups, or are simply built on earlier works like it always have been, and they also need some protection. That number will increase, not decrease. But the copyright laws prevent the creation of remixes and mashups. Hello!!?!

The traditionalists just cannot see, or don’t want to realize, that the copyright is changing. Whether they like it or not, in ten years time we will be far ahead into the structural transformation of the creative industry and cultural policy. If the creative community mindset changes, the laws have to change concurrently. What and how you protect will change, whether they like it or not.

The lawyers, of which the most outspoken on this subject also are lobbyists for the Big Media, obviously have to say they believe in today’s copyright laws – it’s in their financial interest to protect them. The real target for change is the policy makers. It’s true that changes in legislation takes a long time, like ten years, but nevertheless the copyright laws will change. The Pirate Bay, the entire code and all the torrents – Information which accounts for half the traffic on the internet – fits on a single USB stick. Imagine what will happen when cloud computing really take off. The Pirate Bay verdict could for example impact nearly every online service that suddenly becomes liable for making a buffer copy on its own servers based on something you do on your computer. Lots of cloud computing services could suddenly face massive copyright liabilities. Trying to stop a groundswell like this is just pointless.

I strongly believe that in ten years time the discussion on a specific “digital culture” will be obsolete. “The digital” will be integrated in the whole cultural sphere and not treated as a separate issue. File sharing will be a natural part of that. And the survivors will be the companies that change their business models accordingly.

Otherwise we’d have a scenario where content companies are killing off innovation because they’re unable to adapt themselves – and that’s a really sad outcome.

Why Sweden Should Accept More Immigrants, Not Less

2009-06-29T15:47:00.005+02:00

The Chinese are filtering and blocking internet information. The governments in a dozen other counties are also internet enemies: Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Egypt, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam and Yemen.

And the Iranian government has installed a national firewall that blocks almost everything of value.

These countries are not really the Innovation Hall of Fame.

Some don’t care if they aren’t on the list, but some do. For example the Iran government claims they are a high-tech country. Saudi Arabia has an innovation policy and I’ve been briefly involved in a project to build an “innovation city” outside Medina. But they got cold feet when we insisted that women were prerequisite for innovation.

None of these countries can ever explore innovations. All of them can imitate, but create new radical innovations? No.

To begin with most of them discriminate half of the population. Secondly they think you can buy innovation or create innovation by organization. And thirdly they don’t understand that a free flow of information is absolute necessary for innovation, as well as free research and democracy. And by the way they all use western technology, such as Nokia, Siemens, Google and Microsoft, to filter the Web and emails.

China is today the factory of the world. But with their censoring mindset they can hardly move to become the world laboratory for innovations. Once you start censoring the internet, you restrict the ability to imagine and innovate. The Chinese government is telling young Chinese that if they really want to explore, they need to go abroad.

We should be taking advantage of this. For example in Sweden the medical education at universities are dominated by immigrants. It’s the same trend as in Silicon Valley. Not bad, right?

Recessions have always been a time when new technologies and companies get born. We might be able to stimulate our way back to economic stability, but we can only invent our way back to prosperity. Europe in general and Sweden in particular should have the borders wide open to these immigrants.

Photo: http://www.blameitonthevoices.com/2008/07/made-in-china_24.html

Koenigsegg-Saab will be a success, I’m sure

2009-06-16T23:34:00.001+02:00

There are suddenly so many self-appointed automotive experts commenting Koenigsegg buying Saab from GM. Including Deputy Prime Minister Maud Olofsson. So why not add myself?

I think the agreement is very promising. Saab has been in the red from the very beginning of GM’s ownership, and hasn’t been able to develop new much needed innovations. I know from close inside sources that GM has only been a burden.

Koenigsegg will not only keep production in Sweden, but also liberate Saab from the heavy GM administration that efficiently has prevented Saab from inventing. Saab really needs to renew the innovation vigor it once had.

Almost all wanna-be authorities have dissed the agreement. I am convinced it will be successful.

This type of restructuring has happened in other line of businesses. Take the PC companies no one trusted as “serious”, which bought the old mini computer companies: Compaq successfully bought Digital Equipment for example. Or Dell that bought EMC.

Sweden Officially Introduce Creative Commons License for Music

2009-05-27T23:15:00.005+02:00

The board of STIM – the Swedish Performing Rights Society, has decided to introduce a noncommercial Creative Commons license (CC) during a trial period of two years. STIM protects the interests of authors and publishers of music in Sweden. On their behalf, STIM administers and licenses rights to music and text. Through its international network, STIM also represents rights to the worldwide repertoire of musical works. In addition, STIM promotes the creation and dissemination of new Swedish music.

The Danish equivalent, Koda – Komponistrettigheder i Danmark, already offers Creative Commons licensing to its members, making it the second country worldwide to do so. A similar pilot project was initiated in 2007 by Buma/Stemra in the Netherlands.

It shows that collective rights management and licenses can be combined to the benefit of artists, by taking noncommercial online distribution into their own hands.

Famous Swedish Author Vote for Piracy Party

2009-05-27T12:04:00.004+02:00

Lars Gustafsson is voting for Piratpartiet. Lars Gustafsson, one of the most important living Swedish authors, is perhaps best known for his slim novels and story-collections, but he is also a respected poet.

An American citizen since 1983 and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at University of Texas, Austin, Lars Gustafsson has gained international recognition with literary awards, such as the Prix International Charles Veillon des Essais in 1983, the Heinrich Steffens Preis in 1986, Una Vita per la Litteratura in 1989, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for poetry in 1994, and several others.

He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. His major works have been translated into fifteen languages.

(In Swedish: http://www.expressen.se/kultur/1.1583792/darfor-rostar-jag-pa-piratpartiet)

The Music Industry Does Not Deserve To Survive – Part 2

2009-05-22T10:27:00.003+02:00

I was surfing for the monthly music download at random. And as usual I got the message “This album is unavailable for download in your country (Sweden) at this time.” *sigh*

OK, you oligopoly morons. I want to buy the record, I have the money, but you do not want to sell. What do want me to do?

Until you give me a credible answer, I’ll go to TPB and download the stuff. They are the only one who provide what I want to buy. And presently free of charge. Sort of.

How hard can it be?

The music industry does not want me to buy. They definitely do not deserve to survive.

(And anyway, I got the LP so I already bought the record once. So when exactly did Emerson, Lake and Palmer become cool? Oh… right. They didn’t.)

Piracy Through History – Why it’s good for Society

2009-05-18T09:21:00.005+02:00

Thomas Alva Edison in his early piracy days.

I met with Matt Mason last week at the Thinking Digital conference in Newcastle, UK. We discussed the Swedish TPB trial and he had some made very interesting observations: Trace the origins of music, radio, movies, TV and almost any industry where intellectual property is involved and you find piracy at the beginning.

When Edison invented the phonographic record, musicians branded him a pirate out to steal their work, until a system was created for paying them royalties. Edison, in turn, went to invent the movie projector and demanded a licensing fee from those making movies with his technology. This in turn caused a band of filmmaking pirates, among them William Fox, to abandon New York for Hollywood. The reason was more hours of sunshine (most movies in those days was shot in out-door studios), cheap land, weaker unions, more liberal labor laws, and proximity to the Mexican border. When the police raided the pirates they could quickly flee over the border until the coast was clear.

They thrived unlicensed until Edison’s patent expired. These pirates continue to operate in Hollywood legally. William Fox’s startup have became one of the largest in media business: 20th Century Fox.

When cable TV first came about in 1948, the cable companies refused to pay the networks for broadcasting their content. For more than 30 years they operated like a primitive illegal file-sharing network until Congress decided that they, too, should pay for content.

In Europe it was prohibited to have commercial TV and radio – In Sweden as long as until 1987. Radio Luxembourg was the world’s largest commercial station in the 1950s. As it is virtually impossible to prosecute someone in another country (radio or internet) Radio Luxembourg could blanket most of Europe with radio programs for a target group with great spending power and that the traditional national radio stations didn’t care about: the teenagers.

Offshore pirate radio exploded in the 1960s. The Dutch government legislated heavily against radio pirates in 1964 and raided Radio Nordsee by air and sea attack from the Dutch armed forces. That was unsuccessful. Later they became Televisie Radio Omroep Stichting, a Dutch television and radio organization, now part of the Netherlands Public Broadcasting.

The British government legislated heavily against radio pirates in 1967, but BBC launched Radio 1 which mission was to compete with the pirates. They hired the former pirate DJs, like John Peel.

Swedish TV3, owned by MTG Modern Times Group, started out as a pirate. The channel was broadcast from London in order to avoid the tight Swedish advertising rules. When they started TV commercials were prohibited in Sweden and there were serious proposals in 1980s to ban satellite dishes and VHS recorders in Sweden.

There are many more examples of successful pirates become legal successes. (But they would hardly admit they once started out as pirates.)

The pirates are on the wrong side of the law, but they are invaluable for innovation and development in society. By refusing to conform to regulations they believe are unfair, pirates have created huge industries from nothing. But because lax law enforcement these pirates could cut some slack and actually add value to a stagnated monopolized industry. Eventually compromises were reached and new laws created and as a result a new industry developed: the record companies, the Cable TV, the movie industry.

If monopoly laws, like copyright, had stopped all these pirates we would probably live in a world that today look like a giant fundamental religious or political community. No recorded music, no cable TV, no free radio, and a selection of films I rather won’t think about.

Photo copyright: Public Domain, Brady-Handy Photograph Collection (Library of Congress)

A Perfect Example of Traditional Business Models Meet the New Order

2009-05-17T10:44:00.003+02:00

The Swedish Writers’ Union just said fuck you to the largest Swedish publishing house Bonnierförlagen. (photo left) The quarrel is about the Google Booksearch Settlement. Bonniers turned down the Google offer, as many other European publishing houses have done. Logical as they want to negotiate the offer first.

But Bonniers realized that they didn’t own the copyright to the eBook version of most of their titles. The rights are entirely owned by the authors. So the authors are free to sign private deals with Google.

Most of the books are in-copyright, but out of print. And they are “orphan works,” that is, works for which it is virtually impossible to locate the appropriate rights holders to ask for permission to digitize them.

Therefore Bonniers introduce their own eBook offer to their authors. But it turned out that the Bonniers’ offer was a lot worse than Google’s. The new Bonniers deal builds on a traditional copyright – the right to copy and distribute on paper.

Google’s model builds on a Creative Common license, shared between the author and the publisher, developed for the Internet. Bonniers’ model is unsuitable for the electronic media. Funny, as the settlement is about eBooks.

It’s a perfect example of where traditional business models meet new ones.

Google Booksearch Settlement	Bonniers deal
Non exclusive	Exclusive
Cancellation on notice in advance	Forever
63% royalty to the author on sales	24 % royalty to the author on “net revenues” (unspecified)

Bonniers can pick and choose which books they will publish, without the author’s permission or any renumeration.The Sweders Writers' Union understood the Bonniers deal’s lack of common sense. For the authors it should be a no-brainer to choose.

(Photo copyright: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bonniers_dinner.jpg)

An open letter to Piratpartiet

2009-05-13T18:44:00.002+02:00

Concerning the handling of Acta, Hadopi, Ipred, 138/46 and other democracy restricting regulations.

Integrity and transparency goes hand in hand. Sweden has since 1766 had the act on Public access to governmental documents.

The act has been of crucial importance for the Swedish democracy. Swedish citizens have been able to obtain full insight into the background of intended policy decisions and have been able to influence the public debate before the decisions have been made.

In order to fully benefit from freedom of speech, you must have information about what is happening in society. Freedom of information means the freedom to obtain and receive information and otherwise to acquaint yourself with the statements of others. The idea behind the Swedish freedom of the press is that in order to ensure free interchange of opinions and enlightenment of the public, each Swedish citizen shall have the right in print his thoughts and opinions, to publish official documents and to make statements and communicate information on any subject whatsoever. The principle that official documents are made public can be considered a part of freedom of information.

A democracy is dependent on the citizen’s possibility to influence the policy. Without public access to information, there is no real democracy.

In societies without transparency you easily get the impression that decisions are taken behind locked doors. That is a good environment for conspiracy theories, populism and extremism. Openness and public control is a fundament for democracy.

A year ago the EU commission introduced a proposal for changes in the EU regulations: “COM/2008/0229 FIN, Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council regarding public access to European Parliament, Council and Commission documents”

The changes will mostly be restrictions in the public access to official EU documents. The proposal consists of 16 changes of which 11 are increased restrictions to public access, four are transparency neutral and one supports a more open access.

There is no doubt the proposal restricts the transparence and consolidates the public authorities’ position against the citizens.

The proposal will introduce restrictive exceptions for whole classes of documents. It will change the definition of what an “accessible document” is to only comprise documents that can be printed on paper or copied electronically. And member countries will have the possibility to veto handing out official documents.

Public access to official documents is fundamental for democracy. As a citizen it is important to be able to procure information regardless of whether or not you are involved in the matter and regardless of what the bureaucracy does.

It is also important to know that the policy makers have an incentive for thoroughness and carefulness in dealing with a matter. We can for example expect a greater adherence to the rule of law if the documents they produce are public.

And the bureaucracy will probably be more efficient, as better informed public discussions can be based directly on the documents. (SOU 1966/60, p 72)

The legislation on freedom of information continues to fulfill important functions in the Swedish welfare and interventionist state.

In order to hold governments accountable for its actions, citizens must know what those actions are. The government must act openly and transparently to the greatest extent possible. This require making its data available online and easy to access. If government data is made available online in useful and flexible formats, citizens will be able to utilize Internet tools to shed light on government activities. Like mashups that highlight hidden connections between different data sets, or crowdsourcing where the public is invited to systematize or analyze large amounts of data.

The EU should release public information online in a structured, open, and searchable manner and make these available in a useful form to the public.

The EU proposal COM/2008/0229 FIN is a sad step in the wrong direction.

(This text Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike)

The Traditional Media Industry Does Not Deserve To Survive

2009-04-24T23:00:00.007+02:00

I’ve been following The Pirate Bay reality show in detail for a week, both professionally and by personal interest. The many turnabouts only strengthen my opinion that the traditional media industry does not deserve to survive. They are in desperate need of a restructuring. It has happened in all other industries. The media industry is no exception.

It also strengthens my opinion that politicians either do not care or just do as they are told by the multinational media companies. Just look at all the latest directives and law proposals: IPRED, ACTA, HADOPI, Q6/17. There are no proposal, except amendment 46/138, aiming to secure democracy, freedom of expression, or free information flow as a base for research and innovation.

Remember: A free flow of information and freedom of expression is an absolute condition – a sine qua non – for innovation and democracy. Without it copyright, patents and trademarks are irrelevant.

The worst stupidity is HADOPI. It’s ironic that it is a law proposed in France, the very origin of “intellectual property”. The term is a direct translation of the French legal term “droit d’auteur”.

The Swedish government do have commissioned an official report on changes in the intellectual property law: ”Översyn av vissa frågor om upphovsrätt (dir. 2008:37)” There are some interesting proposed changes, but the directive avoids the real challenges. It just routinely refers to international conventions, agreements and the EU, and does not show any intelligent opinion on how it should act in the information society.

The Swedish government is hopelessly lost in translation. They show a passive and apathetic political leadership on intellectual property issues. Apparently they don’t have any interest at all in economic or technological development.

I cannot stress this enough: it cannot be reasonable nor fair that solvency – the capacity to pay – determine how society is formed. But that is what is happening. All proposals are to protect the investments the big companies have done – none are to protect innovation or democracy.

We cannot let the ethical and moral development of society only be guided by money.

The Pirate Bay verdict - It's so obvious the money won

2009-04-17T22:36:00.004+02:00

It’s so very, very obvious. This trial is not about justice, it’s a fight about who can afford to defend a case.

First let’s make things clear about linking and linking:

The Pirate Bay does not itself host audio and video files, but provides links to torrents hosted elsewhere on the internet. So does Google.

But the majority on The Pirate Bay links to files which point to illegal content. While Google may find torrent files, it is a search engine designed to find anything on the web, illegal or not. Google can’t be held responsible for the content of the whole web. The Pirate Bay’s search facility is a lot narrower in scope.

And The Pirate Bay encourage people to download copyrighted material, which makes them a special case.

What upsets me is that The Pirate Bay gets to pay 30 MSEK in damage. (Swedish, English) In penalty terms this is a hefty sentence. A rape victim gets like 100 000 SEK if she is really hurt. The verdict shows that the jury in this trial is in favor of the part with the most resources, the best lobbyists and the most persistent. Which means where the money is.

The IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive) is a European Commission directive which Sweden has fully embraced. It give copyright holders the ability to request information from internet service providers about individual users tied to IP addresses through which copyrighted material has been downloaded.

This law, and the numerous other similar ones that seem to be getting passed around the world, is dependent on the ISPs we subscribe to. Turning them into a tool of the law, and insisting they give up details on their customers, is an insult to an honest customer-business relationship, democracy and trust in society.

It’s so very, very obvious that the EU policy makers only speak for the big multinational companies – those who can afford expensive lawyers and lobbyists.

It is not reasonable that the wealthiest people can dictate the laws. That leaves out the poor, the young, the old, the crippled.

I know that The Pirate Bay does not speak for these groups, but it’s a matter of basic democracy and principles. Art have not been defended at all in this case. It’s the business and the monopoly of reproduction that has been defended.

Remember: copyright and patents are strategic business tools, not only to protect intellectual property. The tools are more often used to keep competitors away, like The Pirate Bay.

Technology drives change and creative people will respond. The reason the distributors are screaming so loud is because they realize that their future reduces their role and they are scared. It’s so very, very obvious.

The trial has only further polarized the tech community and the policy makers.

PS
There are Swedish politicians who do understand what is happening, but they are rare.

Best selling cars in the US 2008 - No European brand in sight

2009-01-18T14:33:00.003+01:00

Note the red figures in change in sales from last year. Except for Honda Odyssey and Toyota Corolla, the red are US brands. (And also note that the European cars are not even on the radar screen.)

	2008	2007	Rank 2007	change
Ford F-Series P/U	481,146	545,963	1	-11.9 %
Chevy Silverado-C/K P/U	425 379	434 937	2	-2.20 %
Toyota Camry	324 702	302 636	3	7.30 %
Honda Accord	266 848	250 663	5	6.50 %
Toyota Corolla	262 431	274 074	4	-4.20 %
Dodge Ram P/U	246 878	250 144	6	-1.30 %
Honda Civic	230 203	225 212	7	2.20 %
Chevrolet Impala	226 541	197 304	8	14.8 %
Nissan Altima	190 151	154 909	10	22.8 %
Honda CR-V	147 454	103 839	na	42.0 %
GMC Sierra P/U	138 759	142 129	12	-2.40 %
Chevrolet Cobalt	133 101	163 343	9	-18.5 %
Toyota Tundra	124 909	8 916	33	58.3 %
Toyota Prius	124 620	70 447	na	76.9 %
Ford Focus	123 158	126 670	14	-2.80 %
Dodge Caravan	120 055	151 858	11	-20.9 %
Ford Econoline/Club Wagon	118 866	119 829	18	-0.80 %
Toyota-RAV4	117 534	104 133	na	-12.9 %
Ford Escape	116 605	112 968	21	3.20 %
Honda Odyssey	113 803	125 588	15	-9.40 %

Source: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=146894

"You wouldn't buy our shitty cars. So we'll take your money anyway"

2009-01-13T08:06:00.000+01:00

25 BUSD to car makers that have been making the wrong cars?

2008-11-20T21:07:00.002+01:00

Let’s see if I get this right. The U.S. government wants to give 25 BUSD to car manufacturers that have been making the wrong cars. It is to “address the recession caused by the financial meltdown”. Mhm... But since the beginning of the year GM shares have fallen over 90 percent and Ford is also down 80 percent. That was long before the meltdown.

Let’s take a step back for a moment.

The problem: too few want to buy U.S. brand cars, right. This means the car makers are not competitive enough. Will a 25 BUSD in government-backed loan fix the problem? Will the car manufacturers be more competitive? Will the consumers buy more U.S. cars? Probably not. The car makers will continue do business as usual. The loans would be like subsidies to secure the jobs.

Compare with Sweden. There are no Swedish car manufacturers left. GM and Ford own Swedish Saab and Volvo Cars. The production in the Swedish facilities has been focused on the American market. When the economy collapsed the sales of Saab and Volvo followed their parent companies with lay-offs.

But instead of giving government-backed grants, the Swedish government provides large-scale support for vehicle research, using the environment as the foremost reason for supporting this research. The Swedish government nowadays focuses on making the Swedish car industry and automotive research competitive. That is the only efficient way to get sustainable growth, they claim.

The Swedish automotive industry today has never been as large and successful as it is today. The Swedish automotive industry instead is doing what it’s good at: specialised in components developed in cooperation with Swedish universities, such as intelligent control systems, catalytic converters and car and road safety systems. The whole Swedish automotive industry now employs more people than it did 10 years ago, due to the successful specialisation. The Swedish companies in the automotive industry Autoliv and Haldex are good examples.

Why not let GM and Chrysler simply go bankrupt to revitalize the car industry? A bankruptcy would clean out the executives and replace the 30-year veterans at the top with people who live in the present and not in the past.

Well, many jobs are at stake and if the automotive industry goes bust it will harm millions of retirees. 2.5 million jobs in U.S., Canada and Mexico are tied directly to these companies. Is 25 BUSD enough to save GM, with a burn rate of over 9 BUSD a year? In Europe the car industry did go bankrupt: DAF and British Leyland to name a few. Out of the ashes rose a much more vital European automotive industry.

But – and here’s a big but – the condition for that arrangement to work is a universal social welfare system that can handle the lay-offs. Swedish trade unions are aware that they are part of the “system”, together with industry, universities, public authorities etc. It’s in their own interest to have sustainable competitive industries. The management in the Swedish companies also understand this and cooperate with the unions, universities and others. And the Swedish government and Governmental agencies support this.

Automotive research is a strategically important area that is prioritized in the long term to ensure future development. Companies that fail to understand the value of a strong link between research, product development and production risk suffering the same fate as the shipyards.

Windows error sound as remix ringtone

2008-11-08T16:36:00.001+01:00

Get this on your phone for FREE Make your own free ringtones

Windows error sound as remix ringtone. Very cool!

Back in business, under the Swedish press law

2008-10-06T20:45:00.004+02:00

This blog is now a registered periodical under the Swedish press law “the Freedom of the Press Act” (Tryckfrihetsförordningen) and have got an authorization to publish.

Permit number: 2008-085

The Constitutional Protection means that the blog gets censorship protection. The authorities are not allowed to censor the content that is subject to constitutional protection.

Also a reporter has the constitutional right to preserve anonymity of an informer. It’s even illegal to ask for the name. Chapter 3, art 2: “It shall not be permitted to inquire into the identity of an author or a person who has communicated information…”

Interesting comparison between unions (Soviet and European, that is)

2008-01-23T00:24:00.000+01:00

Esko Aho, President of the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra and former Prime Minister of Finland, made a very interesting comment at the European Presidency Conference on Innovations and Clusters, on why many governmental efforts to create growth based on innovation often fail.
The European Lisbon Agenda is an action and development plan for the European Union. The intention is to deal with the low productivity and economic growth stagnation in the EU, by proposing various policy initiatives for the EU member states.
It was adopted in 2000 by the European Council to “make Europe the most competitive and the most dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion, and respect for the environment by 2010.”
What happened was that the EU member states invested more in research, hoping that some innovation and growth should show up.
In October 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. In 1961 the Soviet Union with Comrade Chairman Nikita Khrushchev decided on a plan with basically the same goals: Funding research hoping to create growth and be wealthier than the US by 1971. In April 1961 Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. During the cold war CCCR had more scientists than the U.S.
Today we know the result.
It is two years left until 2010. EU has not even left the starting point. The Lisbon Agenda is also a failure.
The similarities between the plans are striking. We devote plenty of attention and resources to preserving the old, while the needs of creating something new have low priority. In Europe we have a hard time accepting that our social model must change if we intend to become the world’s leading economic region.
The failure also is a proof of policymakers’ lack of understanding of implementation. They don’t take into account local conditions. The government’s excessively rationalist or bureaucratic ideologies prevented this.

Michael Porter outdated at European Presidency Conference on Innovations and Clusters

2008-01-22T16:22:00.000+01:00

Outdated slide from Michael Porters presentation the European Presidency Conference on Innovations and Clusters in Stockholm.

I’m at the European Presidency Conference on Innovations and Clusters in Stockholm. It’s the usual bunch of talking policy heads. Currently Michael E. Porter, Professor at Harvard, is having a lecture on “Clusters, Innovation and Competitiveness”, so boring the watches stops. But that’s ok, he’s an academic. It was very U.S. centric and I can take that too. What irritates me though, is that he is using 11 year old slides and data. And still he has opinions about how we run things in Europe.

He charges more than 100,000 USD plus expenses and is so ignorant of the audience not to understan who you are talking to. For my part, he’s a has-been. Overripe. Nothing new and what he says is not supported in reality.

Confessions of an audiophile equipment junkie

2007-11-18T21:25:00.000+01:00

I must confess. I’m a heavy audiophile equipment junkie. You know: Krell, MacIntosh, B&W, Quad, Infinity. Stuff that are extremely powerful and unreasonably priced. I turn on especially on speakers. In my youth I designed a hybrid 6/12db crossover network filter for Audiotronic CM3. Big Swedish transmission line boxes using Kef B210’ as bass drivers and a Gamma VLD 13ribbon tweeter. At that time, around 1980, I thought they sounded fantastic.

Now they are deported to the garage and replaced with Audiopro Black Diamond. I hate to admit, but they are much cheaper and sound better. Technology does make progress. Today, I cannot stand reading hifi magazines, as they mostly are full of subjective nonsense. I switched over to be a computer nerd instead and have been happy ever since.

Anyway, JVC have launched a speakers kit:
http://www.audiocubes.com/product/JVC-Victor_SX-WD1KT_Wood_Cone_Speaker_Kit.html

Dissed by many:
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/11/14/buildaspeaker-kit-fr.html
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/11/jvc-diy-speaker.html

Wired and other magazines miss the point. With a do-it-yourself kit you can modify it. You'd be surprised how good such speakers can sound for a lot of music. It'll unquestionably beat any plastic box. But if you want any real bass at all you must add a subwoofer/boom box.

(Did you know that the JBL 075 tweeter was introduced in 1956? Incredible. It was the high end tweeter until mid 1980’s. Now Bose have taken all the market share.)

Hey, people actually pay for music!

2007-11-07T08:42:00.000+01:00

AP Telegram: “Throughout his career, Colombian rocker Juanes has insisted he doesn't need to sing in English. Hefty pre-launch online sales from his latest CD, ‘La Vida es un Ratico’ (Life is Just a Moment) prove him right. Universal Music says he has sold more than 6 million digital songs – from legal Internet vendors and mobile phone downloads - from the CD before its Tuesday release.”

Hear, hear. People actually paid for music.

It’s interesting to note that the music publishers have never used anticopyright rhetoric. It’s the record companies that whine. No wonder, they own the distribution chain.

Instead of the useless lawyer gymnastics with consumers, why not get smart and change you business model? But, as I have said before, the record companies are guided by lawyers and accountants. No wonder most of them are losing money. What’s needed is success stories like this one, to persuade them to buy into the digital marketplace.

No surprises in the Skype write-off

2007-10-04T19:19:00.001+02:00

I’m not surprised about the Skype writing off Ebay did. (here also) There is an old well known fact in the media business: it is extremely hard to turn free subscriptions to paid subscriptions.

Skype is for free. And if you have more than 300 million users, which Ebay got with Skype, that can call each other free of charge with a program that is for free, there really is no reason for them to pay for something. Everybody you know already are on Skype, free of charge.

And now MSN Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AIM offer the same service as Skype; Skype has become one by many.

What is free will stay for free; otherwise the users turn somewhere else. Just look at Napster (of blessed memory). Napster had at its peak 80 million members sharing music over the Internet. When it was under fire for copyright infringement by the RIAA, the German multimedia giant Bertelsmann bought the company. They saw a huge potential market and wanted to convert the members to pay for the music. It didn’t work. Instead the members turned to free alternatives.

I strongly believe the same will happen with Skype if Ebay tries to convert the members to pay for the calls. Members join Napster, Skype or whatever because it is for free. And the majority of consumers don’t choose the product or service with the highest quality; they choose the most easily accessible.

Ignore basic economic principles at your own risk. Technology changes. Economic laws do not.

Kids Handle Internet Threats Better Than Grownups Think

2007-09-26T09:15:00.000+02:00

One thing that really irritates me is the media picture of kids as naïve victims of threats on the Internet. The media debate, at least here in Sweden, seems to display consensus regarding what threats the Internet poses to young people. It’s all about “adult sexual predators”, or whatever.

When I hear my daughter talking to her friends about Messenger, text messaging and chat rooms, I don’t recognize it. To me the media debate is about grownups, that hardly ever have tried Messenger, let alone Facebook or MySpace, discussing what they think kids are doing on the net. They simply don’t have a clue. I bet no one have ever asked their own kids about their opinion.

My gut feeling has been confirmed. A new study from Umeå University shows that children’s views of the Internet in many ways differ from the media related adult view. They are not anxious about the negative sides of the Internet. They are aware of and can describe many downsides, but these are not present in their everyday use of the Internet. Many children have in fact well-developed counter strategies.

Simply put: they are responsible young citizens, who are aware of the threats that exist in their online setting – sometimes from personal experience – and have developed methods to avoid such threats.

(Dunkels, Elza (2007). Bridging the distance: children’s strategies on the internet. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-1340 (2007-09-26). The method used in the thesis is one-to-one online interviews and the analyses are qualitative in nature. The sample is children in grade 6 of the Swedish compulsory school, aged between 11 and 13. 104 children, 52 girls and 52 boys, from different parts of Sweden were interviewed.)

Pwned Open Source book

2007-09-25T19:57:00.000+02:00

Got mail from old friend and Palm programmer Kalle. He found my old Managing Open Source Projects, now out of print, at the shady Japanese website huihoo.com. The book is available as a pdf. Help yourself and download. It's open source now. (Slow server. Can take some time)

The iPhone is not a PDA

2007-09-25T15:46:00.000+02:00

Apple has made a BIG logical error with the iPhone. It is designed as an iPod with a phone, not a cellphone with an iPod, which makes it unusable for professional use.
In short: The iPod has no data input device and contains no original data. It only stores copies of data from the computer it syncs with. The iPod therefore requires no backup. It is only the computer that requires back-up. If the sync corrupts the data on the iPod, just overwrite it at the next successful sync with the correct data from the computer.
The iPhone has a data input device and does contain original data, i.e. all entries in the Address Book, Calendar, Notes etc made since the last successful sync. The iPhone therefore requires backup, in order to protect that data if the sync fails.
When the 3G version will be available in Europe, I will buy one anyway and hope that Apple have fixed this very serious flaw.
(One possible option: if Skype will port to iPod touch, that has WiFi capabilities, there’s no real need for an iPhone.)

The Iraq effect affects Swedish innovation climate

2007-09-11T16:51:00.000+02:00

It’s September 11 and the papers are once again filled with Iraq war stories. It will take a long time, many years, before the US can leave Iraq. And it will take even longer for the US to recapture the world authority and power it has lost due to the war in Iraq. Since January less than a third of the US population – 28 percent – still thinks the current US foreign policy is a good strategy.

Actually it’s all time low for any president in the US history.

Even if the public political memory is short, the damage the Iraq war has done to the international US reputation will be very hard to wash off. The successor in the White House will have a hard time refocusing on trade, industry, healthcare, environment and other areas.

This affects the innovation policy climate in Sweden. The only US news we get in Sweden is the Iraq war. Nothing about domestic politics, no new national programs, not even tax reduction. Nothing. Except the war.

The US is important for innovations in Sweden. Especially Silicon Valley. But when we talk about “internationalization” internally at Vinnova, more often other regions are mentioned: Germany, Norway, UK, Spain. I don’t think it is deliberate – still the US is Sweden’s third largest trading partner – but if the only news you get from a country is conflict, warfare and combat, you get fed up. The real interesting news gets lost in the noise from the war correspondents stories.

The Worlds Only Reliable Newspaper - R.I.P.

2007-08-07T19:33:00.000+02:00

Horrible news. My all-time favourite paper have published it's last issue. The owner have has pulled the plug. No more Bat Boy stories. No more "12 U.S. Senators Are Space Aliens!" No more Bigfoot and Elvis sightings. The world will be less funny.

Ingemar RIP

2007-07-31T20:04:00.000+02:00

Ingmar Bergman, 1918 - 2007.

Winter Light

And now for some commercials...

2007-06-28T18:57:00.000+02:00

Listen to Lisacast. Darn good weekly podcast talkshow about Silicon Valley and other technology capitals from Hollywood to Hong Kong and Seoul. She has had guests from all over the world on her talk show, like influencial bloggers, emerging technology leaders, journalists with a great story. Lisa welcomes your calls to add worthy input to the conversation.

The Innovation Journalism Blog: EU Commissioner Potocnik: EU Needs Innovation Journalism

2007-06-18T16:51:00.000+02:00

The Innovation Journalism Blog: EU Commissioner Potocnik: EU Needs Innovation Journalism#links

Innovation Journalism - Janez Potočnik

2007-06-16T22:50:00.000+02:00

(Google Video)

Janez Potocnik, Ph.D., EU Commissioner responsible for Science and Research, key-note on "The Support of Innovation Journalism in EU" at the regional Innovation Journalism conference "Stanford after Stanford 2007", June 14-15 2007, Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Slovenian TV channel Infonet Interviewing Janez Potočnik

2007-06-15T23:28:00.001+02:00

Infonet Interviewing Janez Potocnik 2
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

The Regional Innovation Journalism conference “Stanford after Stanford 2007” in Ljubljana, Slovenia, were discussing about the development of innovation in Europe and the role of media in it. Among speakers was EU commissioner for Science and Research Janez Potočnik, Minister and Head of the Government Office for Growth, Žiga Turk, and Tatjana Fink, CEO Trimo d.d.

“I’m NOT a Porn Star” - Once you’re on the net, it’s for life

2007-05-30T12:07:00.001+02:00

Porn company TVX Films snagged a self-portrait of (then) 14-year-old British photographer Lara Jade and used it on a porn cover, without consent or permission. When asked to replace the stole photo the company gave a rude answer, but eventually changed the cover.

But, the old cover with the stolen photo is everywhere. Suing TVX Films is pointless regarding removing the photo – The old cover is still in distribution all over the web at distributor TVX Films does not have any control over.

A sad proof of that once you’re on the net, it’s for life.

Give her some support.

Persistent work pays off – innovation journalism is a real issue

2007-05-26T18:37:00.000+02:00

Was wrapping up the conference and did a search on Technorati this morning (5/26/2007).

260 blog posts about innovation journalism

28 blog posts about innovationjournalism

Four years ago we didn’t even get a single hit on Google. Enough said.

Doug Engelbart - Augmenting the collective IQ of societies

2007-05-23T23:12:00.001+02:00

Doug Engelbart
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Key-note speech by Doug Engelbart, the father of the concept of the personal computer and inventor of the computer mouse. He is a supporter of the development and use of computers and networks to build collective intelligence that can solve the world's problems.

Harry McCracken’s guide to Ethics in On-Line Journalism

2007-05-23T14:05:00.000+02:00

If you don’t have readers who trust you, you don’t have a business. Period.

Good ethics are good business and smart media companies understand that.

You know the story: about the resignation of Harry McCracken, Editor-in-Chief of PC World, and the sudden return. We manage to get Harry to speak at The Fourth Conference on Innovation Journalism at Stanford. He was late to the conference the due to a road accident at 101. But he did the presentation. His first on this topic since the turmoil.

“On-Line journalism has different issues than print” he said. “First, figure out what’s wrong right and wrong at a high level, then apply them to every potential pitfall you encounter.”

High-level rules that work

Journalists still need to serve the readers, not the industry.

They must be willing to criticize advertisers without giving it a moment’s thought.

Top editors must be enabled to serve as a firewall between the editorial staff and the business.

It should be clear what’s an ad and what’s editorial content.

When in doubt, label.

Don’t try to fool your editorial customers.

Always ask yourself: “Would an intelligent reader understand what’s going on here? Would he or she be okay with it?”

Set ethic rules that avoid both actual conflicts of interest and the perception of conflicts of interest.

Disclose relationships between your company and those you report on.

It’s okay (but tricky) for industry people to contribute to your site, with proper disclosure.

Make your rules public.

Don’t loosen ethical guidelines simply because it’s a tough time to make money in the media business.

If you have a solid basic framework for ethical decisions, you can approach the Web confidently, and the fact that it’s different from print won’t be scary.

Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?

2007-05-15T16:01:00.000+02:00

Joel Brinkley, the Lorry I. Lokey Visiting Professor of Journalism, is moderating the Symposium “Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?”

I spent an evening at a crowded Stanford Cubberley Auditorium, at the 41st Annual Carlos Kelly McClatchy Memorial Symposium “Pressing Times: Can Newspapers Survive in the New World of Journalism?” moderated by visiting Journalism Professor Joel Brinkley.

There were four panelists: Bill Keller, Pulitzer Prize winner and Executive Editor of the New York Times, Harry Chandler former executive at Los Angeles Time, Marissa Mayer from Google, and Gary Pruitt CEO of The McClatchy Company, a newspaper and Internet publisher headquartered in Sacramento, California.

All thought the printed newspaper would survive. None claimed to know what the medium will look like down the road. So much for visions and innovations. I was expecting a bit more.
Marissa Mayer, vice president at Google and in charge of search products and “user experience”, suggested that the future of journalism may lie in the hands of MySpace and Facebook reporters. They write first-hand reports that could be edited and aggregated by citizen journalists. (Bloggers, that is.) Ms Mayer didn’t add anything more than confirm that Google is not a publishing company, but aggregating, data mining and filtering of information.
Hm… More consumer oriented news sites like Google News, individual.com and crayon.net, where users can adapt the information flow from their own preferences and filter out all that they think is unnecessary or don’t like, will certainly increase the fragmentizing and polarizing between different groups in society. It will create conformism within these groups. Bad for democratic society, in my opinion.

Gary Pruitt, CEO of McClatchy Company said that “There’s a big print audience still in existence here. That’s not the profile of a dying industry.” He was quite optimistic and had, I think, done his homework well. He pointed out that the newspaper industry must be willing to adapt to new technology. (So, what’s new?) He pointed out that newspapers have survived the telegraph, the radio and the television, even though analysts warned about each new technology would harm the traditional print newspaper.

Well, it had impact. 80 percent of all news papers in the U.S. did not survive, and part of it is new technology that changes the business model.

Bill Keller, Executive Editor of The New York Times, said that Wikipedia got most hits after the Virginia shooting. Interesting. “There is stuff going on out there, and if we don’t understand it, it’s not just the newspaper industry that suffers.”

Harry Chandler of the L.A. Times, whose family recently sold its stake in the Tribune Co. to billionaire Sam Zell last month, was pessimistic. I was surprised of his complete lack of vision. He suggested outsourcing reporting jobs to India and ratings of news media, like the television. Stupid idea. Television is entertainment – news papers are a different issue.

Time for the Annual InJo Conference in Slovenia

2007-05-05T20:20:00.000+02:00

http://www.innovationjournalism.si/si/page.php?6
It will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 14 to 15, 2007, at the Univerza of Ljubljana.

Public Health Blog covers Injo

2007-05-05T20:14:00.000+02:00

Farzaneh Behroozi from Boston University School of Public Health has blogged about Innovation Journalism:
http://thdblog.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/future-forward-innovation-journalism/trackback/
A good short summary of the basic ideas.

First Prize for Innovation Journalism

2007-05-05T19:19:00.000+02:00

Sami Suojanen, a writer for the Finnish morning paper Aamulehti in Tampere did.He won the first prize for Finnish Innovationjournalism, handed out by the InJo Society and sponsored by Nokia.

Sami Suojanen's winning article Puhdasta valoa (Pure light) discussed the future prospects of the Finnish laser industry and presented a number of the most promising laser technology start-up companies of the Tampere region.

Sami won 2500 EUR. Congrats!!

The problem is not the paper

2007-04-14T20:06:00.000+02:00

I discussed the San Francisco Chronicle with Thomas Frostberg, at the seminar in Tallin. The Chronicle circulation fell 6.3 percent last year and 16.6 percent the year before.

We’ve both been reporters at the Chronicle. The newspaper is in big economic trouble and have had layoffs right from I worked there in 2004. And the newspaper plans even more layoffs before the year is out.

“The news business is broken, and no one knows how to fix it. … And if any other newspaper says they do, they’re lying”, Editor-in-chief Phil Bronstein told the staff in an “emergency meeting” recently.

Exactly. But there are solutions.

Newspaper circulation is falling in all countries. In the U.S. it has fallen from 80 to 50 percent since the 1960s, but the drop has accelerated the last five years. U.S. daily newspaper circulation slumped 2.8 percent and Sunday circulation fell 3.4 percent during the six months that ended in September.

Los Angeles Times fell 8 percent. The Boston Globe was down 6.7 percent. The Washington Post’s circulation is down 3 percent from 2005. USA Today fell 1.3 percent. Wall Street Journal dropped 1.9 percent. New York Times’ daily circulation was down 3.5 percent.

In the EU newspaper circulation has dropped 5,26 percent on average since 2001. In Japan it fell 3 percent the same period.

The problem is not the paper.

Reading is a habit and preference. If on-line gives you better quality news cheaper, it’s a no-brainer. It’s certainly easier and quicker to find world news online. Things happen around the world all the time and it’s nice to have that information in real time.

If it is easier to read on paper than on-line, the choice is easy. For mobile devices, news headlines are about the only thing that works. To read an entire article requires squishing it to fit and tons of scrolling. I browse the news on my SonyEricsson M600i, get frustrated and pick up Metro or buy a magazine. Screen size does matter. I simply don’t want to bring a big expensive e-news reader like iLiad from iRex, the Sony Reader or Chinese Jinke that run out of batteries, and in addition pay for a subscription.

I don’t believe print is dead – there’s just some natural selection going on. The mainstream media used to live on a distribution chain monopoly; to control the news from the source to the end customer. Now they get competition.

In Sweden, with one of the highest readership numbers in the world, already all Swedish daily newspapers have switched from broadsheet to tabloid.

Free of charge, very successful and profitable, high-quality paper-based newspapers like Metro are getting a foothold. (Metro is a Swedish innovation, btw.)

Swedish evening paper Aftonbladet has heavily invested in their on-line publication and is today the largest news portal in Europe. And very profitable – they bought the largest Swedish site for classified ads Blocket.

What surprises me is that the management at the big daily papers aren’t doing anything. On the contrary all are reacting like Phil Bronstein: downsizing or faking it. At least the Chronicle is honest about their situation. The Chicago-Sun Times, The Dallas Morning News and Newsday was found to have pumped up their circulation with nearly 100,000 non-existing readers. Tut, tut.

It’s about the business model, not rocket science.

I just wrote this and found this:

http://publishing2.com/2007/03/24/reinventing-the-news-business-requires-a-little-imagination/

Estonia starts program on innovation journalism

2007-04-06T07:57:00.001+02:00

David Nordfors and Viljar Jaamu
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

David Nordfors and Viljar Jaamu, President of Enterprise Estonia, at the seminar on innovation journalism in Tallin on March 28. I spoke about my usual topic, innovation systems as a business model. David Nordfors from Stanford, Jyrki Alkio, Innovation Reporter from Helsingin Sanomat and Thomas Frostberg, Editor-in-Chief and co-founder of Rapidus were also there.

To start with Enterprise Estonia will send a delegation to the innovation in Journalism conference at Stanford. Enterprise Estonia is one of the largest institutions within the national support system for entrepreneurship in Estonia.

Vanity Fair and the Pirates of Sweden

2007-03-20T05:45:00.000+01:00

Here they go about the Swedish sin, although not portrayed as a nude blonde, but as long haired bitTorrent junkies looking to get cool shit for free.

The six pages (in the printed magazine) long article about the Pirate Bay.

Nothing new, really, but as usual with Vanity Fair, it’s a very well written story.

In summary: There are new business rules. “Piracy” is a business model, that is. The harder you push people to go in one direction, the harder they'll push in the opposite direction. Nice try MPAA, but you only waste your time and effort. I have written my points here.

The power of the MPAA lobbying is seen in the statement in the preamble of the Vanity Fair article “... if Hollywood wants to stop online pirates—who cost the industry some $7 billion in 2005—it needs to join them, not beat them.” is just wrong. The piracy doesn’t cost the industry that much – it is only an estimate of the potential loss of income.

Innovation Journalism, covering the future of society?

2007-03-04T09:52:00.000+01:00

Researchers Erkki Kauhanen and Elina Noppari at the University of Tampere have published a survey on innovation journalism in Finland.

The report shows that articles covering innovation in Finland is mostly about IT or cell phones (the Nokia effect?). And that most stories are about local issues. Few discusses what influence a particular innovation has on the future.

No surprises, really. Most of that type of articles are write-ups of a new product or a new service. And the majority of all journalism have a local perspective. But it could be nice to have a bit broader perspective sometime.

However Erkki Kauhanen and Elina Noppari proposes a wider definition of innovation journalism than the original one: covering the innovation ecosystem (which they call "Nordforsian InJo”). They argue that covering innovations should be covering the future of society.

Well, I don’t know. It’s a very academic view. I don’t think you can build any profitable media business on that definition. It’s doomed to be placed in the Weird News section or whatever.

What kind of news are the readers interested in? Mostly it is information to take better decisions. It could be anything from choosing the next movie, to whether they should approve a big corporate buyout.

It is exciting to read all these science/technology future magazines, but if the articles only have the future perspective, you exclude information on how innovations affects us now, how important they are now, and what kind of decisions you should make now. That feels much more relevant for the future of society, than foresight.

“We increases our clients possibility of success”

2007-02-27T18:41:00.001+01:00

Greg Becker SVB
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

“It’s the close relations to venture capitalists and the ability to have very frank discussions, that makes the difference. We have a great deal of interaction with venture capitalists,” Greg Becker, Chief Operating Officer of Silicon Valley Bank said, presenting startup banking in the innovation ecosystem.

Silicon Valley Bank focuses on banking services for technology startup companies. It takes on risks that other banks avoid, by lending to entrepreneurs and companies that are not profitable and might not be for some time.

“Technology-related companies are investing for a fairly long period, losing money and requiring a lot of capital,” said Greg Becker. “Traditional Banks lend money based on cash flow, but start-up companies mostly don’t even have a cash flow. Instead we offer loans based on the pedigrees and connections of the founders of a company. We facilitate businesses. Traditional banks evaluate businesses.”

For startups Silicon Valley Bank has a wide variety of financial options beyond a typical business loan. They finance equipment, do working capital loans, and loans based on intellectual property. It issues asset-based lines of credit or receivable-based lines of credit, with little regard to financial condition.

“We work with a significant number of companies that are pre-profit or in some cases pre-revenue. We tailor our product so we can offer them more value than other banks,” Greg Becker said.

Silicon Valley Bank has built up a unique knowledge of how the innovation ecosystem works.

“The terms are based on the quality of the prospects. For companies under pressure, the loans are tied to assets so that our exposure isn’t as bad in case the company goes bust. A good prospect get fewer restrictions on funding, while the others have to meet certain financial milestones.”

By lending to venture-funded startups, Silicon Valley Bank makes their venture capital money last longer. The companies gets a longer startup period and don’t have to return to the VCs as often, and give up more equity. That means the founders of the company wind up owning more of their own business at the outset.

“We play an intermediary role,” he says. “It’s like we’re coming in at the same time as the VCs, but we are a lender.”

Since the financial instruments are often backed by some kind of asset, the bank isn’t as exposed to risks as venture capitalists are. It doesn’t have to be as concerned about picking only winners.

Silicon Valley Bank is 25 years this year. It has 1,100 employees with three overseas branches: London, Bangalore and Shanghai. Over the last 23 years, it has worked with more than 30,000 companies. It played an important role in lending money in the early years to what are now big tech firms like Cisco and Electronic Arts. The bank has 11,000 clients and 50 percent of all venture-backed companies in the U.S. are clients. Through its venture arms, the company has limited partnership interests in more than 250 venture funds, and 515 venture firms are among its clients.

injo kick-off 2007

2007-02-26T19:57:00.001+01:00

injo kick-off 2007
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

On blogging again. It’s been a while since the last post. For the time being I’ve tried videoblogging at blip.tv. (innovation-journalism.blip.tv)
Now it the 2007 Innovation Journalism kick-off at Stanford. This year we have five Swedes, one Finn and three from Pakistan. Quite an international bunch.

Kick Off for Innovation Journalism in the Balkan Region

2006-10-21T04:12:00.000+02:00

ljubljana 1
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

The “First European Workshop on Innovation Journalism in Ljubljana” took place in Ljubljana, October 19, 2006. It was organized by VIBACOM d.o.o. in cooperation with TIA, University of Ljubljana and a bunch of sponsors. There were 62 registered participants from seven countries, including all major Slovenian media houses.
About the workshop http://www.vibacom.si/injoworkshop06

Workshop blog http://www.vibacom.si/stanfordpostanfordu/?cat=9

The Slovenian innovation journalism initiative http://www.innovationjournalism.si/

We have a severe problem! This calls for an immediate meeting!

2006-10-21T03:54:00.000+02:00

Velenje 1
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

I have been attending the workshop SLO-INNO-TECH (National Initiative for Improvement of Slovenian Innovation Competitiveness) in Velenje organized by TIA – Public Agency for Technology of the Republic of Slovenia.

The purpose was to find new effective solutions for improvement of the Slovenian innovation system, by establishing a dialogue between decision-makers and representatives of the key actors of the Slovene innovation system (economy, government institutions, research institutions and media).

Lars Eklund from VINNOVA and I was invited as process leaders. We have done this before with TIA in June. (Some photos from that event)

The conclusions were the same this time, as last time. What became very apparent was that all the participants quickly agreed on the problems, but no one were interested in taking the responsibility and do things. Everybody pointed to each other.

Slovenia already has a regional innovation strategy. But most of the participants (including TIA) was not aware of the EU project SLORITTS “Regional Innovation and Technology Transfer Strategies for Slovenia”.

There are very similar conclusions in the EU project’s SWOT analysis compare to the workshop. There are a lot of prominent names in the brochure, but who is responsible for acting? The SLORITTS project is from April 2004. Two and a half years old. Nothing has happened since then.

The problem is not lack of ideas – the problem is lack of action. And no one in Slovenia feel responsible.

“We are not against growth. We only dislike changes”

2006-10-16T21:53:00.000+02:00

The The Competitiveness Institute TCI ninth annual international convention on competitiveness, cluster initiatives and innovation system development is over. In in Lyon this time.

A record number of participants were there. 437 attendees from 62 countries at the membership only sessions and 710 more at the open sessions. Five official foreign official delegations were there, and more than ten government officials showed up.

I noted a few things.

Countries that have not traditionally relied on domestic research and development, the Balkans and Pakistan, are now turning their economy to cluster development and innovation systems policy as a main driver for high-tech innovation.

I was very impressed by the speech by Omar Ayub Khan, Pakistan Minister of State for Finance. Listening to European politicians or industrial leaders is just ridiculous in comparison.
The traditional European politicians does not have a clue what all this innovation systems and cluster development are all about. But talk a lot, and I mean a lot, about how active they are in the field. But very few understand what they are doing or what they should do.

And they are in majority. Some statistics on the gender of the speakers at Clusters2006 in Lyon:

Opening day
males 92,0%
females 8,0%
Plenary
males 88,9%
females 11,1%

The only females in the figures were from France – Natural as the convent took place in Lyon and the majority of the speakers were from France – and from Slovenia. There were Elisabeth Waelbroeck-Rocha BIPE, Véronique Adnet, and Catherine Larrieu from France. And Marta Svetina, General-Director of Slovenian Technology Agency TIA, and Tea Petrin, former Minister of Finance and current Slovenian Ambassador in Holland.

These girls understand. None of the male European politicians got it right. None.

This is the core of the decreasing European competitiveness problem; Those in power dislike changes. And they happened to be Caucasian males 60+. From the old Europe.

Europe Not Competitive Until Generation Shift

2006-10-12T00:51:00.000+02:00

Pierre Vigier from the DG Enterprise at the European Commission, responsibility on strategic aspects of innovation policy and on the interface between Research and Industry, notably on technology platforms.

I'm at the TCI conference on competitiveness, cluster initiatives and innovation system development in Lyon. It is the largest in TCI history. Professor Michael Enright, a leading expert on international competitiveness and international strategy, had a brilliant presentation about turning the “Asian threat” to an “Asian possibility”. The problem, he said, was the old traditional notion about protective import taxes and trade barriers would do the trick.

The problem is that these measures are useless. His opinion, and most of the other 430 participants opinion, is that Europe needs a change of attitude to be competitive.

After him spoke Pierre Vigier from the DG Enterprise at the European Commission. He really symbolized the problem. His ten minutes speech turned to almost an hour. And he said nothing. Or rather, he didn’t listen to what Michael Enright said and didn’t pay attention to what the audience interest, or did care anything about that he totally messed up the schedule.

These old politicians are like crocodiles: no ears, all mouth. It is obvious that they must retire or die before Europe can become competitive again.

Chinese word for crisis does NOT mean "danger and opportunity"

2006-09-12T21:21:00.000+02:00

“Weiji” is the Chinese (Mandarin) word for “crisis”. It combines the two syllables “wei” meaning danger or threat, and “ji” meaning, …well, that’s the pit.
“Ji” can have several meanings, depending on the context: machine or engine, aircraft, crucial point, chance, occasion, opportunity or organic. In theory Weiji could mean “dangerpossibility”, but words are not constructed that way.

The meaning of “ji” in this context means something like “incipient moment” or “crucial point” (when something begins or changes). The correct meaning of weiji is ”an important point in time where danger prevails” – a dangerous moment, a time when things start to go awry.

Weiji signifies a perilous situation when one should be especially cautious and NOT a moment when one goes looking for advantages and benefits.

In a crisis everybody wants to save their neck, not go looking for opportunities. It’s deeply human.

The Innovation Journalism Blog: Good Thoughts and Words

2006-09-10T00:03:00.000+02:00

Curtis Carlson, President and CEO of SRI International, likes innovation journalism. Basically he says media has an unrecognized, but very important role in "helping communicate the challenges, opportunities and excitement of innovation and entrepreneurship in our time."

About innovation journalism he says: "One bright spot is a program at Stanford University called Innovation Journalism. It is not about innovation in journalism but, rather, it is a journalism program about innovation. The program is led by David Nordfors with the goal of advancing the public debate about this critically important topic. He has assembled journalists and students from many countries to be part of the program, who then become innovation-enlightened journalists at major publications around the world."

He missed that the program was initiated by VINNOVA, The Swedish Governmental Agency for Innovation Systems.

More here: The Innovation Journalism Blog: Good Thoughts and Words

The book on Amazon, here.

Wired covers Swedish Pirate Party

2006-08-17T21:43:00.000+02:00

(Disclaimer: I do believe in copyright. But…)

The latest issue of Wired covers the The Pirate Party in Sweden. Wired’s article is interesting and well written, but it needs some comments on the business side, the political side and the cultural side.

In my opinion The Pirate Party is mostly a cultural phenomenon in political disguise. Art have always at intervals protested against “the commercialization of society” claiming that “culture is free and belongs to the people”, or similar. Hugo Ball, one of the originators of the Dada movement, described in early 20th century Dada's mission as to “conceive everyday life in such a way as to retrieve it from its modern state of colonization by the commodity form.”

As a cultural protest against the establishment the Swedish Pirate Party is a bit like the spring revolt in France, 1968. In Paris students from the university of Sorbonne, intellectual leaders and artists protested against “the commercialization of mass culture”.

The cultural and political attitudes you find at the Pirate Party have much in common with the Paris spring protesters. The spring revolt was both a questioning of the prevailing cultural climate and a political criticism of society.

The Pirates are not kids or organized criminals, as the MPAA and RIAA insinuate. They are highly-educated, articulate individuals heavily influenced by thinkers such as Stanford professor and creator of the Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, or RMS, Richard M Stallman, the man behind Open Source, a person who lives strictly according to his beliefs, a man who values freedom over convenience, commerce and control.

The Pirate Party are opposed to piracy for commercial gain, but would like to reduce the scope of copyright to five years, after which any work would transfer into the public domain; non-commercial copyrights would simply be abolished.

Their vision or political agenda to decriminalize copyright infringement, abolish patents, and a rollback of the EU Data Retention Directive is of course a mere vision. That just won’t happened. But they are completely right about the big multinational music and film industry having change the copyright laws to their favor.

This is somewhat disturbing and affects not only democracy, but also all creative work: art, academic research and the whole innovation system that is of major importance for Swedish growth.

The large music and movie companies are publicly traded and thus driven by profit. And all commercial companies fight for monopoly. The record companies are no exception. And they have quite successfully carried through laws and regulations to their benefit. Especially in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Motion Picture Association of America MPAA demands government protection against a free market and global flows of information, like the proposed Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) in 2002, which should have had require hardware manufacturers to prevent unauthorized digital reproduction or to embed "watermarks" on analog signals that originate from digital content.

They want the U.S. government to restrict the use of machines that Americans develop, make, sell, and use. And they have clearly tried influenced domestic politics in other countries.

But things have backfired. All the new copyright laws introduced the last ten years, both the U.S. Bills and the EU Directives, has been in the interest of the big record companies and not in the public interest.

Intellectual property, copyright, used to balance the public’s interests and private needs. It is supposed to be an economic incentive for the new producer, not a guarantee for the established.

Copyright is no longer negotiated through the market nor negotiated. It is directed by a handful of large established copyright holders.

The attitude is also clearly seen in their PR. The new rhetoric of copyright no longer reflects the original idea.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) or the (EU) Directive 2001/29/EC have been complete failures. They have not limited the illegitimate digital distribution of copyrighted material. The laws has instead created a sense of censorship (and examples of real censorship). They have been used as a tools entirely for the big copyright holder to dictate the access, distribution and copying of information.

That have caused a big mistrust among especially music consumers. It is a direct consequence of misguided efforts to keep the control over a more or less outdated business model: selling music by the unit. Same thing with copy protection and digital rights management (DRM). There are not a single company that has made any money with selling music DRM solutions. (It killed the DAT technology). There are not a single consumer that see any benefit in DRM (if they know what it is). And if you know Google you soon know how to sidestep it.

Within copyright law (both U.S. and Swedish), there are four important safety measure that balance the censorious power of copyright. Fair use (“citaträtten”), the ability to use the portions of copyright material for various purposes of benefits to the public; The doctrine of first sale, which allows you to resell or led copyrighted material like a book or CD to whoever you want. Thirdly you cannot protect facts or ideas. And finally, there’s the idea of a public domain – the notion that copyright should only be executable for a limited period of time. (though different legal design in U.S. and Europe).

The democratic basis of copyright: The right to fair use, the doctrine of first sales, free share of facts and ideas, as well as the public domain, are thus dictated by those with money. It is deeply unethical that those with money decides over those without.

It’s not surprising there’s been a massive copyright revolt. We are eroding faith in the social contract of the copyright system.

There is lot to say about this, like why the concept of a public domain does not exist under Swedish copyright law. The moral rights – the paternity and the respect right – an originator has to his work(s) are indefinite. It is only the economic rights that have a time limit. Thus a copyright cannot ever fully lapse. The Copyright Act state that the moral rights to a work cannot be totally alienated, that is you cannot giveaway all of your copyrights.

And the information war begun with the rise of the peer-to-peer networks. Lawrence Lessig warned about this situation already in his influential work “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace” from 1998.

The diminishing music sales a myth – part 3

2006-08-09T10:29:00.000+02:00

Music sales 2005 in million USD
CD	10,520.2
Music Video	602.2
DVD Video	539.8
Mobile. ring tones etc	421.6
Download Single	363.3
Subscription	149.2
Download Album	135.7
LP/EP	14.2
Vinyl Single	13.2
Cassette	13.1
DVD Audio	11.2
CD Single	10.9
SACD	10.0
Download Music Video	3.7
Kiosk	1.9
Cassette Single	0
Total	14,815.2

CD sales are 4.5 times larger than the all others combined.

Surprises: Vinyl singles and LP/EP sales that much!? Wow! Who’s buying that stuff? My record player has collected dust the last ten years.

The diminishing music sales a myth – part 2

2006-08-09T09:30:00.000+02:00

The diagram in detail. (The Y-axis is broken at 9 billion USD. The rest in CD sales only.)

The diminishing music sales a myth

2006-08-08T21:55:00.000+02:00

Music sales in millions USD, all media and distribution formats. The figures only represents the major record companies. No independent record labels are represented. Independent record labels account for 12.8 percent of market share. Among the four major recording companies, Universal Music Group lead with a market share of 31.7 percent. Sony BMG Music Entertainment is second with 26.3 percent market share, followed by Warner Music Group's 19.3 percent and Britain's EMI Music's 10 percent.

Don’t you ever wondered if the music publishing industry claims are right? That the claims about music sales going down drastically due to piracy are correct? I made some data mining in the RIAA database.

Some findings:

Between 1995 and 2005 the sales of CDs increased with 41 percent. The losers are not surprisingly CD Singles, Cassettes and LP/EP. The winners are digitally distributed music and ring tones for cell phones.

The digitally distributed music was 4,7 percent of the total music sales. If you combine all forms of media and distributions you end up with no decrease at all.

I strongly doubt that the reason for diminishing CD sales is due to piracy. Online music sales often come at the expense of more profitable album sales as music fans often pick a few favorite songs online instead of purchasing a whole album. It’s a new business model.

End of Start All Over Again

2006-07-13T09:39:00.000+02:00

Peggy Noonan, contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal, have written an Op-Ed worth considering. Internet and modern media technology makes it much harder to put old mistakes behind and start all over again. It’s not bad, but it’s not entirely good either.

Lies, propaganda and media spin are much easier to discover with Internet. It makes it harder for wrongdoers and scruffy politicians. Just think of The Killian documents controversy. That could hardly have started without the blogging community.

But Internet also makes it also impossible to repent, exculpate, or expiate for old sins.
Once something has been published on the net, it’s there forever. You cannot erase it.

Try for example to Google “Ken Lay” and see what kind of information you find.

It’s a change that’s unavoidable. You can have any opinion you like about it, but you cannot ignore it.

Copyright and Hot Summer Vacation

2006-07-08T10:27:00.000+02:00

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) in our garden. Heat wave in Sweden, almost a hundred degrees in the shade.

Been busy discussing innovation policy with a Chinese delegation from Chongqing and wrapping up all left-over work before the summer vacation. (By law, normal working time in Sweden is 40 hours per week, with five weeks of paid vacation. Being over 40 years of age, I have seven weeks according to labor union agreement.)

Intellectual property is a big issue in China, believe it or not. I have discussed the existence of copyright a lot lately, mostly due to the raid on ThePirateBay. I strikes me how much mudslinging there out there is and how little constructive discussing. Some exceptions: Johan Norberg, Joel Malmqvist (in Swedish).

The politicians, no matter political color, are uninterested and opportunistic concerning copyright on the net.

What irritates me is that file sharing is used as a PR tool for extremist political agendas and prevents a healthy development of the music business for the benefit of the consumer. The “copyright is stealing” arguments virtually gets unchallenged in Sweden, except with aggressive lobbying from the movie industry. Therefore we suddenly get overreactions from the Swedish government such as the raid on ThePirateBay.

OK , here goes:
Ownership is a fundamental basis for our society, and there is no principle difference between physical and intellectual property rights.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights – UN
Article 17
Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm
(In case anyone didn’t know…)

Ownership is also one of the basic rights in constitutions all over the world. It is commonly respected for physical things, but not for electronic files containing artistic products.

The solution is not more laws, but new business models. The record industry must develop new business models, adapted to the new technologies. But they have been far too slow to use the opportunities of digital communications and the internet. For me it is obvious that the music industry today is controlled by lawyers and not by professional music business people.

Support for the Balkan region

2006-06-22T21:13:00.000+02:00

Prof Mojmir Mrak, University of Ljubljana, Dr. Boris Cizelj, Director SBRA, Ivan Čehok Mayor of Varaždin, Dženana Abdalajbegović, Head of Cabinet Bosnia and Herzegovina, Liljana Božovič, Directorate for SME Development Montenegro.

The Balkan countries are really cool. They were always considered the outside troublemakers by the old Europe, but are fast becoming a part of Europe. I admit there are still a few issues to deal with, mildly speaking. Ethnical, national and border disputes may still destabilize the region, but I strongly believe that the best way to democracy, growth and political and legal stability is free trade, bilateral contacts and closer cooperation with the EU.

The region south east of Europe has created its own cultural and national profile. They are really a fresh breeze to the old conservative Europe. I like cross-culture – be it nations or regions. In the long run they usually are the most innovative and progressive, and make the best food.

I have spent a week in a warm (+31C) Solvenia at the European Regional Economic Forum 2006 in Nova Gorica , discussing how to build regional innovation support for the knowledge society.

Balkan have made great progress the last few years. GDP is around 5 %, with Albania and Turkey far above the average. Inflation is under 4 %, except for Serbia, Turkey and Romania. The only countries that have a large fiscal imbalance are Albania and Croatia. The trade increases 11 % a year. Except for Turkey all countries have put their debt on a sound basis.

It was interesting to get the many different opinions from the regional authorities on the competitiveness of their neighbors. Some claimed that Croatia (Hrvatska) has the real potential as the next tourist paradise; others promoted great media business opportunities in Serbia (Republika Srbija). Romania is supposed to be excellent for real estate investments and Albania should have surprisingly professional technical development resources. But every one also blamed each other for instability, corruption, complex bureaucracy and arbitrary judiciary systems.

Personally I fell for Montenegro, the brand new small nation. They had a very professional presentation on their strategy for small and medium sized business. (I know, it’s very much marketing!) Montenegro is a pet for the European Commission, who would very much like to show that conflicts can be solved by peaceful democratic measures.

MPAA and the Swedish government – part 2

2006-06-21T21:47:00.000+02:00

The story continues. Today the Swedish Minister of Justice, Tomas Bodström, confirmed that the recent police action against Swedish file-sharing website ThePirateBay was prompted by pressure from the White House on the Swedish government.

The U.S. embassy in Sweden warned the Swedish government that if they did not act, the U.S. government would put Sweden on the WTO warning list for countries non-compliant in copyright enforcement. Podcast from Swedish Public Radio (Real Audio).

Also Expressen, one of the largest Swedish evening paper, reveal that the MPAA hired a Swedish private detective to spy on Tobias Andersson, Piratbyrån, the political party (sort of) behind ThePirateBay.

It’s beginning to look like a B-movie.

(Don’t get me wrong. I still think intellectual property must be protected, within reason.)

MPAA forced Swedish Government to raid PirateBay

2006-06-20T20:20:00.000+02:00

According documents published by SVT.se (Swedish Public Service TV) the U.S. government forced the Swedish government to shut down ThePirateBay.

The documents published by SVT shows that John G Malcolm, Chairman of the Motion Picture Association of Amercia, MPAA, sent a letter to the Swedish Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström, requesting the Swedish government take action against ThePirateBay, refeering to a meeting in last year.

April 10 The Swedish ministry of Justice answered that the Swedish government “will not hesitate to initiate further measures.”

May 31 Swedish police raided ThePirateBay. (Washington Post)

It is interesting to note that the United States Department of Justice (US DOJ) can declare Sweden non-compliant in copyright enforcement, which would allow the US to place trade sanctions on Sweden.

I dislike piracy as intellectual property rights is a base for modern society. But the Swedish police, and now the Swedish government, have acted incompetent and unprofessional. Ministerial government is illegal in Sweden. (When the government orders the administration to do something in a particular case.)

Guinea pig for innovative e-diary

2006-06-08T15:23:00.000+02:00

A friend of mine suggested that I should volunteer as a guinea pig in a research project on interactive electronic diaries called Affective Diary. It is a project at the Interaction Lab at Swedish Institute of Computer Science SICS, in cooperation with Microsoft Research. The idea is to develop the concept of diary and add physical experiences and emotions; what the research group refers to as “affective body memorabilia”.

A body sensor captures data from the user such as pulse, movements etc, and uploads it via a cell phone to the electronic diary.

The data is interpreted by the diary software as a Barbapapa figure that changes color and shape according to your emotions. Well, sort of. The diary looks like a cartoon strip where the Barbapapa falls over and gets blue if you are calm, and stands up and becomes red if you are excited. In the diary you can also put SMS and MMS messages, photographs, make notes, etc.

I’m a guinea pig for three weeks. More bulletins on the project’s progress further on.

University of the Future – is the Swedish Model optimal?

2006-06-07T16:42:00.000+02:00

The workshop gang
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

The Swedish delegation from VINNOVA, Chalmers, Gothenburg University, KTH and The Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences posing outside The HP Garage, the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

At Stanford again, just five days after the last workshop and barely un-jetlagged. This time it’s a workshop on the future of Swedish universities and university colleges with a focus on the ‘third role’ (samverkansuppgiften).

Universities have emerged as central actors in today’s knowledge-based economy. Their traditional role to provide society with research and well educated and talented people, have been extended to also influence social, cultural and economic development in society.

More and more emphasis is put on the way that new knowledge from research efforts is cared for and further developed. Universities are increasingly viewed as key drivers of innovation and ‘major agents of economic growth’. Research provides the key foundations for innovation which directly contributes to improved economic growth, productivity and quality of life, especially job creation and public awareness.

Can a combined “push” and “pull” in knowledge creation generate mutual satisfaction for the researcher and the stakeholders in the surrounding society? This question is highly relevant since public-funded research is intended to benefit the society as a whole, not just a single institution or a single researcher.

At the same time, researchers should, through competitive funding, be able to freely select the research field of their choice. Development of dynamic and open research environments with infrastructure and support system for profiled unique strength could attract and host researchers with diversity in depth and breadth of scientific interest. Research for research owns sake can thereby connect to more systematic and need-inspired research with a mutual benefit.

It can also be expected that the general public, politicians and media will increasingly question and scrutinize how knowledge is mediated and money is used in public-funded research.

There are dramatic changes in how business performs research – tighter collaborations and even outsourcing to universities and research agencies is increasingly the case for major companies.
Society generally is giving universities a central role – and universities are struggling to keep pace with demands made upon then.
Governments everywhere are trying to create more innovative and competitive economies.

In an international comparison, there are some unique elements in the structure of Swedish research. The most significant and essential is the so-called “Swedish Model.” Universities and University Colleges are the country’s main research resource. The postgraduate student system is well developed and to a large extent involved in bringing the latest knowledge into society as they complete their studies in higher education.

The Swedish research institute sector is, at the same time, much smaller than in many other countries. As a result, universities are expected to engage in outreach activities and cooperation with the surrounding world. This is referred to as the “third mission, third stream or third task” which means that universities have the principal responsibility for applied research, implementation of research results and assigned education.

What? On Gothenburg Bio region

2006-06-04T18:17:00.000+02:00

Paul och Aase
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Paul Gatenholm, Professor of Biopolymer Technology at Chalmers, and Aase Bodin, PhD student at Chalmers, tries to understand what Martin Wallin is talking about.

SWOT on Gothenburg Bio region

2006-06-04T18:14:00.000+02:00

Martin Wallin
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Martin Wallin, PhD student from Chalmers, explains his SWOT analysis (or whatever it was) on the Gothenburg Biotech region. Martin was emphasizing that the process of planning is more important than the plan, quoting Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831) a Prussian soldier and a brilliant military theorist. He gained international fame when his book On War was posthumously published by his wife in 1832. On War is a three-volume masterpiece. In this book, he reduced military operations to a science.

On Electing Presidents and Developing Bio Regions

2006-05-25T14:56:00.000+02:00

Karin Markides with Chemistry professor Dick Zare, Stanford University. Lisa Eurenius, PhD Student from Chalmers in the background.

The Chalmers University of Technology Board decided at an extraordinary board meeting on May 23 to appoint Karin Markides as President of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg.

The news just became public. I’m at Stanford, organizing a workshop on the strongholds for research and innovation in the Gothenburg region. We will identify the uniqueness, analyze the opportunities, and identify the challenges of the biotech innovation system around Gothenburg University and Chalmers University. There are people here from the both Gothenburg region and the Stanford/Bay Area.

Hip, Hip, Hooray! And all that. It looked like a coincidence, but Karin assured it was not. We had champagne, of course.

The result of the workshop will be a shared understanding and opinions about the potential competitive edge and attractiveness, as well as the shortcomings and challenges, for development of the Gothenburg Bio innovation system.

What? Is it important to evaluate the clusters?

2006-04-27T17:31:00.000+02:00

Emiliano Duch, President of Competitiveness and a founding member of TCI, discusses how to evaluate clusters.

I’m at the The Competitiveness Institute - TCI symposium on evaluation of clusters in Barcelona. Michael Porter at Harvard Business School made the idea famous outside the academic area.

For a government like Vinnova, where I work, clusters simplify practical issues like training, infrastructure development and procurement. They are an effective and popular way to stimulate regional economic growth.
How do you evaluate a cluster initiative? (They are all publicly funded.) Well, it turns out that governments mostly don’t evaluate.

Christian Ketels at Harvard Business School and Stockholm School of Economics have written a good basic about evaluation of clusters.

This symposium is not an academic exercise (conceptual, experts talking about objects, etc), but a very hands-on way on deciding what are the most important issues and how to achieve them.

(almost) new blog on Innovation Journalism

2006-04-25T23:58:00.000+02:00

Turo Uskali from University of Jyväskylä in Finland, visiting Scholar in Innovation Journalism at Stanford, has been blogging about innovation journalism since December. His blog is "Innovation and Journalism".

Podcasting Premiere

2006-04-24T18:50:00.000+02:00

I've been talking a lot about trying to podcast, but now it's the time. The conference in Slovenia was podcasted. Here's the Hallelujah choir, excerpt from The Messiah by Händel, performed by Collegium Cantorum, Uppsala Domkyrka. Recorded March 2000. (Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License).
http://www.clickcaster.com/innovationjournalism

Podcasting Premiere

2006-04-24T13:35:00.000+02:00

Innovation Journalism program started in Slovenia

2006-04-22T23:32:00.000+02:00

Slovenian mineral water available at the conference that tasted like the smell of my shaving soap. Quite original. More photos from the conference.

I was invited as a key note speaker to the “Stanford po Stanfordu” innovation journalism conference at the University of Ljubljana 20 April. I’m very impressed how far and fast the program in Slovenia is moving. They got hold of the concept less than a year ago and have now signed a Letter of Intent for the Innovation Journalism program with the University of Stanford by the University of Ljubljana and the Technology Agency of Slovenia (TIA). And I find myself an honourable advisor to the program.

Slovenia is a small country (2 million citizens), but small countries have also its advantages. Sweden is often a test lab for new technology, and Slovenia is a perfect test bed for this concept. When you get people interested in a topic you can really get all levels of society to cooperate.

Most of the conference was in Slovenian, but there is a conference blog in English. The discussions were mostly on the same topics as we have in Sweden.

There are four daily newspapers in Slovenia, selling no more than 240.000 copies. Slovenia traditionally has good journalism schools. The faculty of journalism at Ljubljana University where the conference took place has been around since the 1970’s. It was the first in all former communist countries. The media legislation in the Republic of Slovenia is surprisingly modern, almost like the Swedish. The constitution is explicit in giving the right to obtain ‘information of public nature’, given a ‘legal interest, based on the law’. More here: http://www.ejc.nl/hp/mas/sedmak.html

Stanford after Stanford

2006-04-11T15:44:00.000+02:00

"We all need to learn how to talk to each other, how to cooperate. Sweden, Finland, Silicon Valley are not by coincidence the drivers of global change. Probably the strongest differentiation factor is the networks that they have… their way of cross functional cooperation."

Exactly! It’s all about getting people talk to each other. And magic happens if people from different disciplines talk to each other about the same problem.

Innovation comes from new looks at old problems; when people see beyond their expertise and together approach situations actively and in new combinations. Great breakthroughs often develop as a result of a combination of ideas from different fields, not within one specialized field only. Innovations occur at the intersection of multiple fields or interest areas, where ideas and opinions from different fields and cultures meet and diverge, to form new discoveries and solutions.

Most people have a core competence where they have developed expertise. You also have to have an “open attitude” for new approaches and learn new ideas. It just struck me that innovators are often self-taught (at least Swedish). They educate themselves intensely and often have a broad learning experience, having excelled in one field and learned another. Broad education and the ability to self-educate appear to be two keys to learning differently. The Swedish National Agency for Education and the Swedish National Agency for School Improvement has a special action programme for “lifelong learning”, to be able to learn in any stage of life. It is all purposeful learning activities whether formal, non-formal or informal like literature, media, and experience of life.

It is also essential to have a supportive environment. If you’re too much rebel, you’re rejected. It you’re too much conformist, you’re not innovating. The problem is all people who find themselves in environments where they are forced to specialize. (I have a lot of that experience
myself, but finally found a place where I feel can use all my knowledge and experience)

Blogs, punk rock and some thoughts on the conference

2006-04-10T17:40:00.000+02:00

Finally the conference is over. I was surprised to see how many international initiatives that had been started since last year. And France is coming too. I talked to Frédéric Miribel, Chargé d’études économiques at the Chambre de commerce et d’industrie de Lyon, who was very interested in starting an innovation journalism program. That will be discussed at conference Clusters 2006 in October 9-13, in Lyon.

There was a lot of discussion on blogs and journalism. One big blogging issue is the (lack of) quality. So what? What blogs do is making it harder charging for bad journalism. There is a lot of crappy journalism being printed today. With blogs you can get all that crap for free plus the good ones. The blogs are just new competition to the traditional media and that is a good thing for the readers. For the moment there is a jungle out there, but I am convinced that we soon will have ways of finding quality. The change in the media landscape today is no more different that is was with the tabloids during the 1900th century or the radio in the 1930’s. People learn too choose and find tools: there are ratings, reviews, editors, friends, and sometimes we even decide ourselves.

I find that the blogosphere is a bit like the punk rock movement. An anti-establishment movement with a provoking frankness of expression, with strains of social and political relevance, that is missing in established industry. In other words: “the current media sucks and we publish what we like to read.”

In general it struck me that many of the speakers from The Big Publishers were defending themselves: “We do cover…”, We do write about…”, We do use internet/blogs/whatever…” It would be more interesting to discuss what the new media can do, instead of cross-examine the old papers. For next year I would like to see more video bloggers, web magazines and podcasters.

Not surprisingly there also was a lot of discussion if there is a need for a new label “innovation journalism”. The question does not have any answer, but the discussion is necessary and personally I think the discussion is the issue. It’s like the question “What’s good music?” To paraphrase Duke Ellington: Journalism is a category of writing. But everything that goes into the paper/web is not good journalism. If it’s about innovation it’s innovation journalism. And it depends on who’s reading how much innovation journalism it is.

To a certain point we need labels to be able to identify different topics. And I do believe that we should change the way journalistic labels are now somewhat; journalism should not be put in one broad category.

KTH starts Swedish Innovation Journalism Initiative university programme

2006-04-09T14:09:00.000+02:00

KTH Learning Lab, part of the School of Scientific Information and Learning, will start Sweden’s first university programme in innovation journalism in 2006. The course is aimed at for working journalists and others who possess important skills and knowledge. The goal is to provide commissioned education in Innovation Journalism corresponding to 5 university credits.

The participants will get knowledge of the different players in innovation system and processes and their different ways of reasoning, analysing and behaving. Participants will also receive training in assembling complex information from different sources in order to create a realistic holistic view.

Parallel with the lectures, each participant will plan, carry out research and write articles dealing with innovations and innovation systems. Alumni from the Innovation Journalism Fellowship program will comment and provide critical feedback during participant work processes.

More blogs on Innovation Journalism

2006-04-08T08:21:00.000+02:00

Marco Formento – Cailloux Just a link. But still...

The final panel on the role of Journalism in Innovation Systems

2006-04-08T01:03:00.000+02:00

Final Panel right
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Lisa Chiles, USAID/Pakistan Mission Director
Ellen Levy, Director of Industry Collaboration and Research, Media X, Stanford University; Network Advisor, Draper Fisher Jurvetson
Joseph Yang, Director of the Science & Technology Division of the Taipei Economical and Cultural Office (TECO) in San Francisco, Taiwan
Patrick Windham, Lecturer, Public Policy Program, Stanford University

The final panel discussion on the role of Journalism in Innovation Systems

2006-04-08T01:02:00.000+02:00

Final Panel left
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

David Nordfors, Program Leader, Innovation Journalism, Stanford University
Karin Markides, Deputy Director General, VINNOVA, Sweden
Antti Hautamäki, Director of Innovation Research, SITRA, Finland; Visiting Scholar UC Berkeley School of Information, Finland
Markku Huusko, Arvopaperi Magazine, Finland

Innovation Journalism as an Essential Element in the new Endogenous Theory of Growth

2006-04-08T00:30:00.000+02:00

Erkki Kauhanen
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Erkki Kauhanen, Researcher and Journalist at the Journalism Research and Development Centre, University of Tampere in Finland gives a more philosophical view of innovation economy. It has in its core a dynamics that in terms of the so called new growth theory (NGT), is called endogenous growth. It is based on the idea of knowledge being a "non-rival good" (with relatively little extra cost that is) knowledge can multiply like a plant and it can therefore be used by several agents at the same time. That makes possible "increasing returns".

Erkki:
"One of the main alchemistic mechanisms whereby knowledge is turned into gold, or efficiency gains, is technological complementarities. It refers to old and new technologies (sensu lato) supporting each other, producing together more than each would have accomplished alone, thus opening new avenues of development.

It is claimed in this article that this dynamics is only possible on the condition of effective and efficient communication. Especially horizontal communication that 'transgresses' technological boundaries is important and fertile.

Usually economic theories treat the process of knowledge multiplication as a black box and do not pay attention to how it is happening. Therefore, all too often, it doesn't. Here innovation journalism has its most natural area of application."

The Role of Journalism in forming the Public Perception of a New Industry

2006-04-08T00:20:00.000+02:00

Stine Grodal
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Stine Grodal, Doctoral Candidate in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford, is talking about how media uses different word depending on what type of coverage it is. In this case a rhetoric analysis on the emergence of nanotechnology – Nano before it was Nano.

The Basque Initiative on Journalism and Innovation

2006-04-07T22:32:00.000+02:00

Patricia Valdenebro
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Patricia Valdenebro, from the International Knowledge Cluster in Spain
is promoting a "Basque Network on Journalism & Innovation" where local journalists, editors and main communication and media agents from companies, research institutions, universities and administration can meet together and dialogue about innovation journalism, their needs and interests covering innovation. The final aim is to map future actions about innovation journalism that contribute to develop the Basque Innovation System with national and international connections.

Innovation Journalism program in Slovenia

2006-04-07T22:22:00.000+02:00

Polona Pibernik
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Polona Pibernik, Director at Mediade , is presenting the Innovation Journalism initiative in Slovenia.

Innovation Information and Journalism in Germany

2006-04-07T22:17:00.000+02:00

Simone
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Simone Huck, Assistant Professor for Corporate Communications, Department of Communication Science, University of Hohenheim in Germany, talks about the the German Innovation Communication Program. She presented the results of INNOVATE 2006, the second nationwide German trend survey on innovation communication in Germany. How innovations gets edited for different target groups or different media types, by want means of sources and media channels journalists and PR-experts learn about innovations, and what part the interconnection of economy, technology and social aspects of innovation editing in Germany.

Innovation Journalism program in Finland

2006-04-07T22:06:00.000+02:00

Turo
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Turo Uskali, Visiting Scholar, Innovation Journalism, Stanford,
describes the experiences from the first Innovation journalism pilot course for undergraduate students at University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

Innovation Journalism to fight poverty

2006-04-07T21:17:00.000+02:00

Pakistan Innovation Journalism 2
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Alisa Weinstein, Senior Editor, Innovation Journalism and Kevin Murphy, President, J.E. Austin Associates, between David Nordfors, are emphasizing the importance of innovation to fight poverty in underdeveloped countries. Kevin Murphy pointed out that the first goal is to change people’s mindset in those countries, which nowadays is fighting innovations. Innovation journalism has an important role to achieve that goal. (A lot of computers for the video connection to Pakistan)

Innovation Journalism Program in Pakistan

2006-04-07T21:12:00.000+02:00

Pakistan Innovation Journalism 1
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Amir Jahangir, Consultant Competitiveness Support Fund in Pakistan on a very shaky video Skype connection from Pakistan, explains the Innovation Journalism Program in Pakistan. They are planning to have more than 750 journalists in the program.

Day 3 of the 3rd Conference of Innovation Journalism

2006-04-07T19:35:00.000+02:00

Yesterday was really exhausting. 12 hours in total, if you count the dinner reception afterwards.
P.H. Yang from The University of Hong Kong took some photos during the first 2 days of the Conference: http://injo3.shutterfly.com/action/

Opening speech day 2

2006-04-06T19:39:00.000+02:00

Curtis Carlson
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Curtis Carlson, President of SRI International, talks about The Discipline of Innovation in his opening speech.

Good morning! Day 2 at the conference

2006-04-06T18:11:00.000+02:00

More bloggers writing about the conference (during the night):
The Daily Me
File Sharing on The Web

More bloggers covering the conference

2006-04-06T04:15:00.000+02:00

Frostberg i San Francisco http://frostberg.blogsome.com/
In Swedish only.

Webpronews. Ross Mayfield. Same post as below.

What's the deal with Podcasts?

2006-04-06T04:08:00.000+02:00

David Hornik
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

David Hornik, August Capital, explains why podcasts are cool and why you can make money on them. He's right. (It turned out that he is a hobby musician) You should read his blog www.ventureblog.com

Podcasts as Innovation Journalism - the business model

2006-04-06T04:00:00.000+02:00

Rick Horning
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Richard Horning, Principal at Fish & Richardson P.C. argues that aggregators are not a new concept (remember TV Guide), but could be very profitable.

Podcasts as Innovation Journalism - is it the content or?

2006-04-06T03:59:00.000+02:00

Sam Perry
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Sam Perry, Startup Adviser and a Fellow at the Reuters Digital Vision porogram agt Stanford, argues about the future of podcasts.

Podcasts as Innovation Journalism - investments

2006-04-06T03:53:00.000+02:00

Paul Matteucci
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Paul Matteucci, Partner at US Venture Partners explains why he invested $5.5M in Podtech, an Innovation Journalism startup.

Podcasts as Innovation Journalism

2006-04-06T03:52:00.000+02:00

John Furrier
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

John Furrier, CEO, Podtech Networks Inc. talks about "New Platform. New Economics. New Realities."

Another blog (well, sort of)

2006-04-05T23:50:00.001+02:00

Pod Tech.network http://www.podtech.net/?p=469

Other bloggers on the conference - so far

2006-04-05T22:27:00.000+02:00

In English:
Ross Mayfield’s Weblog http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2006/04/vint_cerf_on_in.html

In Swedish:
Erik Stattin’s My Markup http://mymarkup.net/blog/archives/009625.html#009625
Peter Svensson’s Silicon Svensson http://siliconsvensson.blogspot.com/

More panelists

2006-04-05T20:00:00.000+02:00

Harry McCracken, Michael Kanellos
Originally uploaded by Innovation Journalism.

Harry McCracken Editor-in-Chief PC World and Michael Kanellos Editor-at-Large CNET News.com.