About this ebook
The main purpose of this book is to provide policymakers, corporate leaders, young entrepreneurs, and academic researchers with practical tools and guidance that may enlighten their visions. A guide that will contribute positively to building a suitable environment for the development of entrepreneurship initiatives, will able them to implement a sustainable strategy for cultivating and growing innovative startups.
The reader of this book may notice a slightly different approach used in describing the entrepreneurship and innovations ecosystems as the colony of innovative startups. The main idea behind that is the awareness about the current situation of different business climates, and the necessity for such a contribution to solving different problems that hindering the growth of innovative startups, and the sustainability of different entrepreneurship initiatives worldwide. I hope to achieve a maximum of success and growth that will have a positive impact on economic development.
The Problem: Entrepreneurship Initiatives Are Popping-Up Dispersed and Disturbed
There are thousands of entrepreneurship initiatives that pop-up like mushrooms every day. You can call them Excellent Polls, Innovative Clusters, Incubators, Hubs, Start-up Labs, Science-Parks, Tech-parks, etc. Initiatives with the ultimate goal to create the
Next X Silicon Valley. An imitation effort to reproduce, without a single understanding of the context, the history, the resources, and the vision that led to the San Diego Silicon Valley, home of multi-billion tech-giants. Many concrete examples of these initiatives, which are still subject to critiques and sometimes to controversy, about their outcomes and real contributions to economic growth. Cases from the Munich Smart City in Germany; the Creative Cluster in Australia; Kista, and Ideon in Sweden; Technology Triangle of Waterloo in Canada; the Masdar of the UAE among many others. All these initiatives have different structures and their ways of contributing to the country’s GDP are also different. However, all of them have similar goals, which is the creation of a successful business environment for startups. An environment where several startups together with other stakeholders, play a vital role in the development of their national economy.
Many of these initiatives are mainly consequences of the principle of Knowledge-based economies. Other are the results of a combination of interactions between different stakeholders inside the ecosystem, following the Triple Helix Model (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1995). Because they are geographically dispersed, it is almost impossible to measure the value added by every initiative in a single country. The focus is always on limited targets at a national level. These initiatives are also characterized by limited resources and actors, to cover large scale targets and have a significant contribution to the country’s economic development.
The Solution: A colony That Consolidates and Reassembles Efforts
This book is not introducing the secret formula to rebuild your own Silicon Valley. It proposes a logical solution to enhance and build a suitable, and positive climate for startups. To consolidate multiple entrepreneurship initiatives in one project, which will collect maximum resources and integrate a considerable number of players. The mainstream inspiration of this book comes from the phenomenal of the self-organized colony of ants, such a biological ecosystem of social insects that run and sustain its growth perfectly. A business model that inspires from the collective behavior of ants, which generated the swarm intelligence. A smart swarm reflected by tasks and labor organizations for every member within the colony. This book will try to export the ants' collective behavior “
Business Model” into the world of entrepreneurship and innovation. A model reflected by a new concept of building a positive environment for startups to grow and flourish, which I call in this book “A Colony of Innovative Startups.” It involves many stakeholders that interact together within a particular geographic space, where they can cooperatively allocate considerable resources and contribute to achieving the colony objectives of growth and sustainability.
About the author
Known as “Cizar Antmann” to many of his mentees and professional networks worldwide. Bachir BRAHIM is an academic, professional mentor, and a serial entrepreneur with broad experience in running multiple startups internationally. He holds a Magister in Business Communication, a Master in Entrepreneurship, and a Master in Innovation Management, he is finishing his Ph.D. in Business Administration.
He has spent the last ten years doing research, and learning from the most successful stories about innovation and entrepreneurship globally; including living, and running businesses in countries like Algeria, Denmark, Canada, Germany, Italy, Mauritius, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Arab Emirates. A learning journey that reflects the pursuit of views, beliefs, and opinions around the degree of strength or weakness, success, or failure of different entrepreneurship initiatives worldwide.
Bachir has quickly understood the importance of knowledge transfer and sharing experiences in promoting entrepreneurship and creating value in society. So, he applied these values to his endeavors by sharing knowledge and work experience with aspiring entrepreneurs through multiple mentoring programs and social entrepreneurship initiatives. Since 2010, he has trained and mentored more than 2000 entrepreneurs in growing and scaling up their business. He has been honored with several international awards for his contribution to entrepreneurship promotion within universities. He is currently most passionate about studying ants biology, and biotechnology of social insects in order to improve and enhance the business model presented in this book.
Bachir divides his time between Germany, and Sweden, where he is focusing on writing about finding innovative solutions to promote entrepreneurship and innovation.
