Cleaning up British entrepreneur James Dyson offers just one lesson for inventors seeking to emulate his achievements: commercialise your own inventions. His success designing, developing and selling the revolutionary line of Dyson vacuum cleaners was hard won, but he has no regrets. James C. Tuckerman caught up with Dyson in Sydney for a chat about…
The Commonwealth Games are almost here, and you know what that means? Self-congratulations! But next month, when our swimmers are lapping Jamaica’s finest and our archers are splitting Rhodesian arrows, spare a thought for the behind-the-scenes success stories – our technology developers who give our sportsmen and women every opportunity to excel. Liz Heynes and…
China is the modern-day headquarters of hope and heartbreak for ambitious foreign entrepreneurs. Australian owned and run companies have been in the front seat of the rollercoaster since Deng Xiaoping opened the world’s most populous nation to free market reforms in the 1980s. Last issue, in the first instalment of this four part series, Paul…
Get to know as many people as possible and remember your manners. That was the advice that helped ex-soccer player and professional networker Jon Burgess survive the mean streets of East London, circa 1983. It also became the underlying principle behind his groundbreaking and Australian-born networking philosophy. Paul D. Ryan meets the original Invisible Networker….
Has anybody ever handed you a losing business plan? Unfortunately, the headstrong conviction that a particular new idea will be a big winner is intimately entwined with the process of inspiration, where an idea that gestates and evolves into a new initiative is inevitably invested with all the promise of a newborn child. When someone…
Offshore intellectual property transactions, generally, include an element of escrowing. Whether an intellectual property owner is involved in a licensing, franchise, reseller, distribution, partnership, joint venture, and/or collaborative development relationship, it is inevitable that the intellectual property owner will need to manage requests/contractual requirements to have their core intellectual property escrowed in a foreign country…
Failure must be one of the most under-appreciated experiences in business today, and probably life in general. For some reason, Australian culture is particularly intolerant of failure. The media glee that accompanies each big corporate failure is quite astounding. Some commentators have said we celebrate failure, evidenced in our reverie of Gallipoli and the black…
Achieving your first sale can literally make or break a start-up. Many investors will delay committing significant funds until you can identify a customer prepared to pay real money for your product. It is often at this point that many start-ups fail: not because their product is not up to scratch, but because they run…
The Art of Promotion by Lisa L Cyr (Rockport Publishers, paperback, 2005, 159pp, $44.95) While some people take the view that ideas for promoting your products or services are best left to marketing and design professionals, ideally you should begin with some ideas of your own. This colourful book explores breaking through the clutter…
As the internet morphs into Web 2.0 before our eyes, the tech wreck appears but a distant memory. Once a dumb dumping ground, the information superhighway is becoming smarter, more intuitive and highly personalised. Thanks to the mass uptake of broadband, a new breed of websites are revolutionising people’s daily habits. Here are three that…
ALMOST FAMOUS While most people, at some stage in their life, indulge in the surreptitious daydream of one day being awarded a Nobel Prize, very few make it onto that prestigious stage. For those possessing the necessary fervour to make things happen, but whose genius is a little misguided, there are the ‘Ig Nobel’ prizes….
BI-GOODNESS is a bi-monthly column dedicated to the quirky, generally funny and often dangerously impractical inventions and business concepts that occasionally come our way. It is a tribute to the one-eyed entrepreneur, the nutty professor and dotcom jockey in each of us. People of a certain vintage will remember the first truly shocking series of…
I HAVE TO CONFESS, I’M A SCREENER. I received a letter by snail mail the other day. In big red letters across the front, it said ‘YOU ARE A WINNER!’ I binned it, unopened. I may not be a winner, but I’m not a loser either. I love my answering machine. It’s handy when I’m…
While most teenagers have enough trouble negotiating puberty, these three are cutting deals, launching new ventures, creating new markets and showing what it takes to get ahead… from way behind. They went out and made it happen before anyone told them they couldn’t. And there isn’t a lemonade stand in sight! Enter the teentrepreneur. …
Whether it be trading for silk and spices or chasing online eyeballs, the West has had a long fascination with expanding Eastwards. The lure is part growth fetish, part colonial fervour. But there is a catch. Unlike the Opium Wars of an earlier age, this time round the Orient may have the technology advantage. Looking…
I am filing this on the eve of the fourth annual ANZA Technology Network showcase and conference, deep in the dark heart of Silicon Valley. ANZA has become an annual pilgrimage for me. Somewhat ironically, the best way of seeing a bunch of the best new technology companies from Australia and New Zealand requires travelling…
Traditionally, as the year winds down and temperatures soar, Australia’s professionals forsake the board room for the beach and barbeques. This summer, take advantage of the January lull and get a jump on your competitors. Renew your business plan, refresh your brand and revive your passion. Start the New Year ready to raise hell (and…
It’s official. The world’s most populous nation has awoken from its economic slumber and is storming inexorably toward unprecedented prosperity. For ambitious entrepreneurs seeking a taste of this action, China is the place to be. But for the cavalier and the unprepared, China’s allure can be a siren song. In this first instalment of a…
Sleight of hand: mobile comes of age In the developed world, mobile phone ownership is nearing saturation point. In some technology-obsessed countries (like Singapore), it is not uncommon for people to own more than one mobile phone. You need only watch a teenager punch out an SMS to comprehend how pervasive and indispensable the technology…
Early stage venture capitalists are entrepreneurs, too! They’re switched on, chased up and brimming with ideas on how to breathe life into commercial opportunities. But first they have to be convinced that it is an opportunities. But first they have to be convinced that it is an opportunity. Paul D. Ryan persuaded five of Australian’s…
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