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Bisila Bokoko, “A Cultural Hybrid”

  I am inordinately held up in Manhattan’s unpredictable traffic even as Bisila Bokoko waits endlessly for me at the Les Ambassades patisserie in Harlem. She has promised to show me around the African-American neighborhood with its vibrant alfresco cafes, arty hotspots and cultural hubs. She is about to finish her third cappuccino and a plate of Senegalese rice when I show up, hoping she hasn’t left. But despite the two-hour wait, she’s a picture of calm. We soon walk the streets to Apollo Theater, the legendary Harlem performance hall, ending our May evening jaunt at Red Rooster, the restaurant run by Ethiopian celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, another famous African export. The place is packed for a week night and there are many regulars by the stylish smoke-filled bar who wave to Bokoko. All along, we have been chatting about Africa, a continent she visits more than three times a year. Her kohl-lined eyes light up every time she mentions her umbilical cord connection to the land of her dreams. Bisila Bokoko is many things at the same time – businesswoman, motivation speaker and TV personality – but she is also a wine entrepreneur, and very much like the boutique…
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Tim Berners-Lee was honored with the Turing Award

Tim Berners-Lee, the researcher who invented the World Wide Web and is one of the world’s most influential voices for online privacy and government transparency, has won the most prestigious honor in computer science, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) A.M. Turing Award. Often referred to as “the Nobel Prize of computing.       ACM cited Berners-Lee for “inventing the World Wide Web, the first web browser, and the fundamental protocols and algorithms allowing the web to scale.” This year marks the 50th anniversary of the award. A principal investigator at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) with a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Berners-Lee conceived of the web in 1989 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) as a way to allow scientists around the world to share information with each other on the internet. He introduced a naming scheme (URIs), a communications protocol (HTTP), and a language for creating webpages (HTML). His open-source approach to coding the first browser and server is often credited with helping catalyzing the web’s rapid growth.   “It is an honor to receive an award like the Turing that has been bestowed to…
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Rahaf Harfoush, society’s changing interpretation of creativity

Rahaf Harfoush on her role on Obama’s 2008 campaign, social’s role in integrated campaigns and society’s changing interpretation of creativity.   Rahaf Harfoush was a full-time volunteer member of Barack Obama’s digital team in the lead-up to the 2008 presidential election, working primarily in the team that managed social networks, as well as working with email, SMS, design, blogging and video. She turned her experience into a book, using the campaign as a case study to document the innovative use of digital tools in that campaign in Yes We Did! An Inside Look at how Social Media Built the Obama Brand. She’s now a New York Times best-selling author and has published a second book The Decoded Company. A third book is in the works. Harfoush also runs boutique consultancy Red Thread and teaching innovation in Sciences Po’s MBA program in Paris. She is a Strategist, Digital Anthropologist, who focuses on the intersections of emerging technology, innovation, and digital culture. She is the founder of Red Thread, a boutique consultancy and think tank that helps organizations translate innovation trends into strategic opportunities. She teaches “Innovation & Emerging Business Models” at Sciences Po’s MBA program in Paris     Obama 2008 is a famous early example of a social media-led…
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How Miha Pogacnik Empowers Business Leaders Through Music

In 1992, a train was steaming through the steppe along the Trans-Siberian—the famous railway that runs from Moscow to the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan—en route to Ulan Bator, across Russia and Mongolia, with artists, journalists, and joyriders from both sides of the former East-West divide. The organizer of the journey was Miha Pogacnik, a Slovenian classical concert violinist and activist. Pogacnik was bringing not only his music with him, but also innovative ideas that Eastern Europeans desperately needed back then to reinvent their societies. Pogacnik has lived three lives so far: In the first, he was a consummate master of the violin. Then he became a political and cultural activist in crisis areas all around the globe. His third life arose from the same urge to make an impact through music where he feels it matters most—which now is the business arena. As a leadership consultant, he has given acclaimed talks to companies such as Microsoft, Nike, and Porsche, collaborated with UN agencies and such gatherings as the World Economic Forum, and taught at leading business schools from Havard to IESE in Barcelona, CEIBS in Shanghai, and the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. For him, classical…
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From a homeless man to a millionaire – life lessons from the real hero, Chris Gardner

“The world is your oyster. It’s up to you to find the pearls.”   Who hasn’t cried buckets while watching Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness? We perched on the edge of our seats, our hands on our moist cheeks and praying that Chris Gardner would dodge the clutches of sheer bad luck and make it to the finish line. I know I did, and I’m venturing a guess that you did too. The Pursuit of Happyness traces Chris Gardner’s journey from a homeless man to a multibillionaire. With a pearly smile on his face and the tough lines of age and experience setting base on his face, Gardner is the ultimate personification of a self-made entrepreneur, someone who refused to give up even when life was kicking him to the curb. With no degree or experience, he managed to find himself a low-paying gig of selling medical supplies. A chance meeting with a man in a Red Ferrari changed his life forever. He caught this person’s attention and asked him what he did to afford such a car, to which the latter replied that he was a stockbroker. Gardner often describes this as ‘the moment he knew’ – he…
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Mason’s computer-game design program welcomes, Nolan Bushnell, Atari founder

The founder of the Atari video-game company and the Chuck E. Cheese’s restaurant chain is bringing his technology know-how and business acumen to George Mason University’s Virginia Serious Game Institute in Prince William County.         Nolan Bushnell recently was named VSGI’s “Game Pioneer in Residence,” and he began his service by connecting with GMU computer-game design students and giving a public lecture Oct. 3. Scott Martin, founding director of GMU’s computer-game design program, said the college wanted to work with Bushnell because he’s such a big name in his field. “He’s known as one of the fathers — or the father — of the game industry,” Martin said, noting that Bushnell was a mentor to Apple computing legend Steve Jobs and is still close with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.He also pointed out that, as an entrepreneur, Bushnell can teach GMU students about running a company, as well as about using technology. “So he’s ideal for what we do at Mason,” Martin said. VSGI, Martin’s creation, is a video-game and computer-simulation business incubator on GMU’s Science and Technology Campus near Manassas. Bushnell said last week that students need to understand that they can’t simply create a video game…
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Brian Solis: Brand experience: Write a style guide and emulate Beyoncé

Does your brand have an experience style guide? Marketing author Brian Solis thinks it should, and that you should watch today's top music acts for cues on how to craft compelling experiences.       Most companies have a brand style guide, but few are prepared with an experience style guide for their products and services. This has to change in an era where successful brands like Apple, Tesla and Starbucks are built on satisfying customer experience, according to Brian Solis, principal analyst at Altimeter Group (part of Prophet) and the author of X: The Experience Where Business Meets Design. "If you have an experience style guide, brands will think about what they want consumers to feel, how consumers would react to the experience and what consumers would talk about them after the engagement," Solis told Campaign Asia-Pacific in an exclusive interview in Hong Kong. Then, the brands can design the details to create a consistent user experience for the consumers." Because every app is telling consumers that they are the most important person in the world, Solis, a self-described "digital analyst, anthropologist, and futurist", said brands have to work out how they want consumers to feel in every moment.…
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Guy Kawasaki’s Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Veteran Silicon Valley businessman and marketer Guy Kawasaki grants entrepreneurs his keys to launching and running a successful startup.   Guy Kawasaki is a Silicon Valley name that needs no introduction. He's been a leading voice in entrepreneurship and evangelism for years, beginning at Apple in 1983. As an adviser, author, investor, and marketer, Kawasaki has cultivated a unique perspective on what it takes to start a company. He's particularly adept at helping startups and early-stage companies get off the ground—and guiding them towards becoming well-known, successful businesses. Kawasaki is always willing to share his advice for founders and aspiring entrepreneurs through his writing and speaking (including at Lean Startup Week this fall). Over the years, he's seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, and also uncovered many misconceptions held by new entrepreneurs about starting companies. We asked him to chat about what he's learned in his career, what's changed since he's started, and what today's entrepreneurs need to know to be successful. Kawasaki's Golden Touch Given the impressive list of companies for which Kawasaki has worked over the years, you might think there's some complex formula or secret behind his success and influence. But in his mind, it's…
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Julie Meyer: The Fight Back Strategy

People tend to over-complicate what is glaringly obvious most of the time.   Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are four of the most important companies of our age. Each in slightly different ways, but more similarly than differently, have won big in this digital, exponential age by doing a couple of things consistently and systematically: • Using consumer data to power their services • Recognising that all business models have that data as an implicit party in the business model, and then organising the economics for their industry, re-imagined as an ecosystem • Using their reach, distribution, audience, scale as a ‘highway’ for applications to drive over (the Ap Stores). They understand that start-ups and applications are really just revenue-generating algorithms or digital cars in search of a route to market and a customer base to exploit. In essence, these are the characteristics of ‘platforms’. They are open to the revenue in the App Economy and take advantage of the infrastructure. There are really three versions of the future: • The technology platform companies mentioned above, and a couple others like LinkedIn and Salesforce.com take over every industry. There is a lot of evidence for this assault. • The second…
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Bernardo Hernández, new partner of E.Ventures

There’s more evidence of European VC stocking up before a potential LP winter. This time it’s e.ventures, which has closed a new $150 million early-stage fund to invest in European startups. The VC, which has offices in Berlin, San Francisco, Beijing, Tokyo, Moscow and São Paulo, is also announcing that Bernardo Hernández is joining e.ventures as a general partner. Hernández has founded multiple companies, including real estate listing site idealista, and has been a senior director of product at Google and the general manager at Flickr. Bernardo Hernández also has 10 years of experience investing, including founding his own VC firm in 2008, StepOne Ventures in San Francisco, in a bid to help European companies access the U.S. market. Mobile marketplace Wallapop, social network Tuenti, and retail CRM Index are some of Hernández’s more notable investments. Meanwhile, e.ventures’ new fund will be focused on seed and Series Arounds, and, says the VC, will be deployed alongside its existing $290 million growth fund, which invests at later stages and is used for subsequent funding rounds. In this regard, e.ventures is talking up its ability to support its portfolio startups with capital and operational expertise through the “full investment lifecycle,” although that isn’t entirely…