John Hanke at BizBarcelona

You might not have heard of John Hanke until now, but he was the founder of Keyhole, which later became Google Earth (at this point every single person's head will be nodding up and down in agreement I guess!)

John Hanke was an entrepreneur until Google bought his company Keyhole and employed him for six years, and two days ago he came to Barcelona to speak about the path down the road of success.  

As Hanke himself stated, his success came from the fact that he was creating tonnes of data rather than recreating it. And this is the reason why Google apparently approached him so keenly, because he was being truly entrepreneurial by creating a completely new product

What John Hanke emphasised most throughout his session was the constant need for innovation. Without innovation a product can have no guarantee of continuing forward with considerable success. And competition from other sides means that they will lose control of the market. These things may all sound very basic to people who do this, but I for one have found them obvious yet I would not have thought of them probably! For example, Hanke said that Google Maps developed from being an aerial view mapper to a 3D mapper to a map where people from the area can also add parts to the map, such as a bicycle track or a particularly nice building hidden in a small remote town in Russia (for instance). This constant innovation means that the product becomes much more advanced and retains a grasp on the customers, who will always want the latest technology in their product. Simple, but true and maybe too obvious to realise!

The next post will be on the round table "Born Global", with six entrepreneurs and angel investors from around the world, each discussing what they think is the ultimate goal to success in entrepreneurship.

Fira de Barcelona (15th June 2011)

Fira de Barcelona, Barcelona

 For anyone wishing to attend a Fira de Barcelona event, the route is very easy. It is very near the historic centre of Barcelona, making it very accessible to all people. There is a Metro stop 20 metres from the main entrances (Staition name: Espanya) connecting with Line 1 (red) and Line 3 (green) which take you past the centre of Barcelona (Plaza Catalunya, Urquinaona, Arc de Triomf) and down to the port and beaches (Drassanes) respectively

"create, inspire, grow"

This is one of the large promotional posters covering the entire entrance.

Inside the show itself

Unlike Madrid's IFEMA (fair district), Barcelona's Fira is at everyone's doorstep, creating a much more fluid trickle of visitors. This immediately expands, the fair's prestige and people start to hear about it much more often. The fair complex no longer becomes a secluded part of the city where wearing a suit, a tie and carrying a briefcase is the norm.

Barcelona, City of Entrepreneurs (15th June 2011)

bizbarcelona: salon emprendedor 2011, Barcelona

BizBarcelona: the Trade Fair for entrepreneurs and investors: 15th-16th June 2011, Fira de Barcelona, Barcelona.

Hundreds of young entrepreneurs have gathered for the last two days at Barcelona' Trade Fair district, the first entrepreneur event of its kind in this Mediterranean city.

What has saved Barcelona from falling into a crisis as deep as the rest of Spain's? The short answer is its diversified economy: as Jordi Hereu, the previous mayor of Barcelona, states, there is not one sector of the economy which is over 20% of the interior product. This effectively means that when the crisis started, and the Spanish construction boom suddenly became the Spanish construction abyss, Barcelona was less damaged by the effects due to its lesser reliance on construction and its larger output in other sectors such as technology and science.

This entrepreneurs' show aims to bring together over 12,000 people, ranging from major international companis such as Telefonica, Intel, Philips and VISA to the youngest of entrepreneurs from a range of countries, although mostly from Spain, and in particular Barcelona.

I attended three talks: I only had three and a half hours at the Fair, so I was unable to do much more really! The first post will be about the location; the following three posts will be dedicated individually to the three lectures/conferences/debates I attended; I will then try to outline major points I have learnt from these three hours in a few folowing posts. So keep looking at the blog to find more information.

If anyone reading this works out how to include things like graphs and so on, let me know and I might be able to include some too!