My experience as technology scout in Silicon Valley.

1. A GLIMPSE INTO SILICON VALLEY
Stefano Mizio
February 17th 2011

2. You need to take a look outside
your company
If you spent the entire your ca-
reer in a big company...
Your DNA (the way you see
problems, opportunities, mana-
gement) is biased!!
You need a
Different
Perspective!
Dead Poets Society

3. The Menace
“A dream to some... a nightmare for others” [Merlin, Excalibur]

4. What Peter Drucker says about
innovation....
“ Innovators use both the
right and left side of their
brain.
They look at figures and
they look at people.
Go out to look...
...to ask
to listen!“

5. Are you a tourist?

6. What is Silicon Valley?
If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings...
Great Universities Risk taking
Right Investors
Mentoring System Openness
But it's the people that makes it Silicon Valley,
not the buildings.

7. Some Myths
You need Venture Capital.
Not completely true!!!
...on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing private companies. Only approximately 16
percent of the roughly 900 unique companies on the list from 1997-2007 had venture
capital backing.
Kauffman foundation report
Google, Microsoft, Cisco
are vital to employment.
Wrong!!!
startups aren’t just an important contributor to job growth: they’re the only thing.
Without startups, there would be no net job growth in the U.S. economy. From 1977
to 2005, existing companies were net job destroyers, losing 1 million net jobs per
year. In contrast, new businesses in their first year added an average of 3 million jobs
annually.
Kauffman foundation report

8. Some Myths
Unemployment,
what is it?
Gigaom

9. Do you know that...
California looks like Italy in terms of GDP... according to
The Economist but only 37 million population (Poland)

10. Where I spent my time
Almost 6,000 miles!
My best friend: TomTom.

11. Formal and informal information
sources
my eco-system...

12. Technical meeting
It's maybe the best way to meet people to
share the same interests
Very informal way!
“Pizza and Software” as in Mountain View for
Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Group last
August on Open Stack!
OR...
more formal such as at IEEE workshop on
“Internet of things” in Santa Clara University in
September.

13. Business Meeting
OR...
..gathering Venture Capitalists gut feeling,
looking at their portfolio and meeting startups!

14. “Classical” Events
To get the big pictures and main trends!
Mobilize event on the “Future of mobile web”
in San Francisco last September
Or...
DiscoveryBeat
at Mission Bay
last October

15. Visionary Events
To get inspiration!
Listening from Marissa Mayer from
Google or Tim Brown from IDEO or
Rendy Comisar from Kleiner Perkins
at Stanford.
Or...
Listening John Hagel III in Moun-
tain View while he was giving an
insightful look at the power of to-
day's knowledge flow

16. The Italian Guys
Silicon Valley Study Tour at our Consolato in
San Francisco

17. Scouting Process
Julian Bleecker at Device Design Day in SF on how Science Fiction
can help innovation
The iPAD 23 years ago
iPad and Star Trek

18. Scouting Process
Identification Selection Assessment Dissemination
? ? ? ! CTO/CMO
? !
? ? R&D manager
? !
? ? ! ! Product M.
?

19. Scouting Process
Identification Selection Assessment Dissemination
? ?? ? ! !
? ? ? ! !
? ? ? !
Cloud Computing
IT Governance
Mobile payments LBS Mobile Health
Internet of Things
App Discovery CleanTech
Cross Platfom
mobile dev

20. Scouting Process
Assessment
High
Market impact
Potential market size
Competitors' landscape
Relevance
low
High Technological low ProGrid SW
realization complexity
Technology maturity
Complexity
DT Process

21. So... what?
American Excitement
Italia, 44° Rapporto Censis
“società senza spinte vitali...assenza di motivazioni a cambiare...”
“...scopriremo che sempre più spesso il lavoro bisogna crearselo,
non cercarlo, perchè non c'è quasi più niente da trovare in giro,..”
Riccardo Luna, Wired gennaio 2011

22. Sometimes Cartoons can
inspire you
The new needs friends!
Anton Ego, Ratatouille
Change is nature.The part
that we can influence. And
it starts when we decide.
Remi, Ratatouille

23. Where are you going?
With Luck, Forward!! !
Remi
Thank You
Twitter: SMIZIO - stefanomizio@gmail.com
you can find me on Linkedin