See How TiEcon Will Connect the Dots that President Obama’s State of the Union Speech Didn’t cover

The key theme of President Obama’s state of the union speech on Jan 25th was Innovation. There is no doubt that we all agree that innovation is the key to maintaining America’s coveted top spot in the global economy. Yet it will be innovation pushed forth from the private sector that will create the bulk of this success. Government funding may have helped create the Internet, but it took many startups and large companies to bring it to the masses.

At TiE, our mission is to foster entrepreneurship; through our collective thinking we decided that Innovation would be the most fitting theme for our annual conference, TiEcon. We tip our hats off to the head of state for recognizing the importance of Innovation since it’s very much in line with our mission here at TiE. But at TiE, we make a mission out of Innovation in showing innovators a path forward — a path forward to innovate , a path forward to create something big and meaningful for this world whether within their companies, or to go out and create the next Google or Facebook.

Whether you are an Intrapreneur or an Entrepreneur, you need tools to channel your Innovation. So what are the tools needed for channeling innovation? Equally important, we believe them to be the following:

• Mentoring
• Networking
• Education
• Funding
• Celebrate

Mentoring

There are many who have tread this path before and so knowing some of the  roadblocks and how to clear them may save you months. Yes you need mentors who have done it before and that is what TiE provides. This year’s TiEcon will enable informal and formal mentoring 1-on-1 sessions with experienced and successful entrepreneurs we call TiE Charter Members

Networking

One reason to go to any conference or trade show is to network with your peers and competitors alike. TiE has one single-minded focus on fostering entrepreneurship, whether inside or outside your companies. Therefore, this year’s TiEcon is expanding its formal networking opportunities by allocating more time between sessions and expanding its coverage to include TiE Innovation Expo wherein you can network with your peers, your customers and partners.  TiEcon will offer you opportunities whether you need a co-founder or just some early team members.

Education

Knowing how the system works is half the battle, and that is why TiEcon focuses on both basic and advanced skill workshops and panel sessions. This year we will focus on the 5 hottest technology trends of Cloud, Energy, Mobile, Physical Science and Social while enhancing our offering of basic how to sessions for entrepreneurs. We will have many inspiring speakers to keep your batteries charged.

Funding

Every successful innovation needs money to complete development and productize or to market and sell it to the general market.  At this year’s TiEcon, you will learn how to do fundraising and you will meet with many investors from seed to venture capitalists to late stage fund managers.

Celebrate

It is more important to celebrate small victories than to brood on setbacks.  This year’s TiEcon will end with a celebration of success in the form of a giant banquet and entertainment for entrepreneurs.

Conclusion

If you are an entrepreneur or want to be one, you can’t afford to miss TiEcon this year on May 13th and 14th at Santa Clara Convention Center.

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Indian Mobile Operators are going to spend over $20B for 3G Licenses – What can they do to recover these license fees?

Last week I went to India and the big news was India’s budget deficit is going to be reduced thanks to 3G auctions fetching in excess of Rs 670B with total likely to exceed Rs 1,000B (~ $20B) after WiMax auctions. In a country with an approximate ARPU (average revenue per user) of $4/month and 420M subscribers, how are operators going to pay for it.

Some Misconceptions on 3G

In reading various articles in Indian magazines, I was surprised at the misunderstanding amongst local pundits and the solutions proposed. The proposed solutions varied from offering 3G video conferencing, TV services (none of the video services make sense unless LTE type bandwidths are available and even then there is no proof of video conferencing making money for service providers anywhere in the world), location services (one doesn’t need 3G to have location services) and for operators to find a killer service. (operators are not known to find killer services)

Obvious Path though not Right

The obvious temptation for mobile operators will be to offer new data services and like the current VAS (value added services), keep a very large percentage of service revenue for themselves. I am afraid this will not work. Look at the examples of US and other western countries where data services  took off only after Apple made it easy for software developers to come up with new applications and keep 70% of the revenue generated.

Some Ideas

This is what I think Indian Operators should do to recover their investments and increase profitability. What do you think?

• Don’t deploy yesterday’s technology and instead take a leap to LTE technologies so that it can actually become a contender to replace DSL for broadband
• Become the best pipe and open the platform for hardware and software developers to innovate on
• Imagine new low cost smart phones, Netbooks, iPads, eReaders, laptops and other new devices all with built-in 3G technologies requiring monthly services
• Imagine new applications customized for Indian markets all requiring data connections where a developer has an incentive to innovate – a large market, good % revenue share with operators
• Imagine every student (India has lots of them and spends a lot on education) carrying a 3G enabled device all the time consuming data services everywhere

Conclusion

Just as mobile phone brought the first phone into majority of Indian homes, 3G has the potential to bring mobile broadband and hence Internet into every home provided mobile operators are not short sighted and provide the best data pipe and leave others to innovate to increase value of their data pipes and hence revenue and profitability.

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Should RIMM buy PALM or adopt Android like Motorola or Apple?

RIMM had a great quarter – a time after which companies usually forget to do the right things. On the contrary this is really the best time for RIMM to react now before it is too late. So here goes my thinking on what they should do and soon…

It is very clear that RIMM’s unique advantage of Blackberry push email is not sufficient for it to retain the market leadership. First Apple’s iPhone, then PALM Pre and now Verizon’s Droid are eating at its market share slowly and RIMM has to respond to stay relevant. One thing is clear that current OS of Blackberry has reached its limit and that is one area RIMM has to find an alternative while retaining its unique advantages. It needs developer community and a great web experience to compete – getting to new customer segments will be a nice bonus.

It has four possible choices

• Build a new OS
• Buy PALM
• Google surrender strategy
• Google enhancement strategy

Build a new OS

Building a new OS will not bring developers easily to Blackberry and so that choice seems impractical. Yes I know Samsung went against the common wisdom and introduced Bada its new OS but got a big yawn from the market so far.

Buy Palm Inc.

Buy PALM which is currently at a market cap of $1.65B and would probably cost close to $2B. What would RIMM gain is WebOS, a great Web experience but not necessarily developers. Yes it will get access to a younger market segment that PALM manage to penetrate but RIMM could put the $2B elsewhere for a better return.

Adopt Google’s Android

RIMM can finally eat its pride and make the right business decision by adopting Google’s Android. There are two ways to adopt this strategy

• Follow Motorola’s Lead or Google surrender strategy wherein the handset vendor just builds the hardware and adopt Android as is  – kind of like what Motorola did with Droid for Verizon Wireless ( In all fairness, Motorola did some work on its Cliq for T-Mobile)
• Follow Apple’s Lead or Google enhancement strategy wherein the handset vendor not only builds hardware but adds its unique values and controls the end to end user experience. This is similar to what Apple did with BSD UNIX and created Mac OS X.

Conclusion

RIMM should adopt Google Android and add its unique push email, sync, security and other goodies while continuing to control end to end user experience.  This will give RIMM a better OS, developers and continue to maintain its unique advantages.

What do you think RIMM should do? Share your opinions here.

R. Paul Singh

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