Indian and Chinese Entrepreneurs Leaving US

Interesting Article from Venturebeats' Entrepreneur Corner. This US downturn is more serious than a mere recession - in part because of the fear of Foreigners that has rarely been a part of US public life in the past. There may have been many individuals with prejudiced views, but public figures stood for America as a great innovation capital for the World. To do that one needs to let people travel relatively freely. Enhanced border security and pat downs for every flight leg reduce the willingness of people to visit. Border Security personnel do not seem to be acting as though they are America's frontline of Welcome - people's first impression of arriving in America is likely to be harsh. In contrast China works hard to make visitors welcome. Immigration control officers each have a little 'voting button' where you register if you were happy with them or not. Every visitor votes. If America loses the innovation lead, other losses will follow.

Venturebeat says:

skilled immigrants are leaving the U.S. in droves. This is because of economic opportunities in countries like India and China, a desire to be closer to family and friends, and a deeply flawed U.S immigration system. It doesn’t matter whether we call this “brain drain” or “brain circulation”– it is a loss for America. Innovation that would otherwise be happening here is going abroad.

With all the stories we read about weak infrastructure in India, authoritarianism in China, and corruption and red tape in both countries, the perception is that these entrepreneurs are facing major handicaps back home. They have no chance of competing with us, so we have nothing to worry about, right?

Wrong.

Read the full Article

Web 2.0 Inspirational Startups

Tim O'Reilly from O'Reilly Media, Inc., Enterprise Radar - yes - THAT publishing empire is talking about how Web 2.0 (c) is changing into something that interacts with the real world - sensors, people, user created content. He addresses the inspirational and vision aspects of startups - going for the big idea. Ordinary ideas and me too are already funded and won't attract more. During the talk Tim refers to several sites - I've put links to some of them here:

• 23andme - 23andMe's mission is to be the world's trusted source of personal genetic information. They offer a high-density, custom genome scan. Data is used for research as well as personal health information.



• Benetech - Benetech emerged out of the pioneering work for Arkenstone, the world leader in reading machines for the blind. Seeing the value in providing affordable tools that greatly empowered the reading disabled, Jim Fruchterman was inspired to found a business that utilized technology to serve social causes. Benetech was born.
  

More links to sites below the video ...

Click To Play

• ClickDiagnostics - ClickDiagnostics, Inc. has a dual mission of bringing quality medical advice at the doorstep of every household in the developing world at an affordable price, and developing cost-effective solutions for gathering critical data needed for planning and executing public health interventions. They utilise mobile phone technology to connect rural patients with remote medical specialists.


• InSTEDD - InSTEDD is an innovation lab for technologies designed to improve community resilience and save lives through early disease detection and rapid disaster response.


• Omidyar - Omidyar Network is a philanthropic investment firm that is committed to creating and fostering opportunity for people around the world. It makes both grants and investments, identifying likeminded organizations that they support, scale, and champion to maximize their social impact.
  
  Omidyar sees philanthropy as more than a type of funding. In its truest sense, philanthropy is about improving the lives of others, independent of the mechanism. Therefore, they use a wide range of tools in their work, embracing market-based systems and open, web-enabled platforms as key means for making the world a better place.


• PatientsLikeMe - PatientsLikeMe is committed to providing a better, more effective way to capture valuable results and share them with patients, healthcare professionals, and industry organizations that are trying to treat the disease.


• Prosper - Prosper.com is a peer to peer Bank - an online community for lending and borrowing money, with over 810,000 members and $173,000,000 in loans funded on Prosper. Borrowers enjoy fixed monthly payments, no hidden fees and no pre-payment penalties.


• Ushahidi - The Ushahidi Engine is a platform that allows anyone to gather distributed data via SMS, email or web and visualize it on a map or timeline. The goal is to create the simplest way of aggregating information from the public for use in crisis response.


• WITNESS - WITNESS is an international human rights organization that provides training and support to local groups to use video in their human rights advocacy campaigns. Beyond providing video cameras and editing equipment, WITNESS is committed to facilitating exposure for their partners' issues on a global scale. They help broker relationships with international media outlets, government officials, policymakers, activists, and the general public so that once a video is made, it can be used as a tool to advocate for change.

Slide show from slideshare:

Timorexpony

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: web2expo sheep)