A decade later - Fundação Luso-Americana

As far as entrepreneurship is concerned,
it is accepted by investors that
you learn the most if you reflect on why
you were at fault. This is the extreme
opposite of Europe, and it is Europe’s
biggest challenge.
It’s Europe’s biggest challenge because
I think that for Europe’s market to be
innovative, or try new things, there must
be some appetite for risk, and some
appetite for failure. It can’t be that if
you try something and fail, your life is
over. Even more so because the chances
of being successful on your first attempt
are so remote. Sometimes the greatest
stories are the ones in which people fail
many times.
‘ in europe there’s this
idea that people
don’t fail.
’
[P] Would you say Americans are more innovative
than Europeans?
[MF] I think that Americans are willing
to take risks that allow them to be more
innovative. I don’t think they are any
smarter or any more creative, or any
more innovative. I think there’s a culture
allowing them to take risks, a culture
that says it’s okay to leave and start
somethig new.
[P] How about Little Kids Rock?
[MF] Little Kids Rock is a non-profit
company that we started in late 1999-
2000. There was a school teacher who
had an actual music school program.
Then she and I partnered up. She knew
how to teach kids to play music, and I
knew how to bring people together. We
brought in the accounting skills, managing
skills, legal skills, and formed a
board, and then together we started to
raise money. We started with only 25
kids in the US, and now we reach over
a hundred thousand kids. We have over
a thousand schools in the country, in
20 different states.
*with André Sebastião
socieTy
opportunities rather
than money
Professor of Strategy and Innovation
Management at the Polytechnic Institute of
Turin in Italy, and a member of the board
of Italy’s National Agency for Innovation,
Mario Calderini believes that governments
must not focus exclusively on funding
research to spark innovation.
[Parallel] How can public policies enable countries
to become more innovative?
[Mario Calderini] National policy should
stop giving direct money and finance
to companies, and be more directed
toward creating new business opportunities
and new markets, using public
demand. We should give customers and
market opportunities to companies,
rather than money. It’s something that
makes a company take more risks, and
become more innovative. If you give
them money, they become lazy.
[P] You said that too often, innovation is generated
from the top down. Can you explain
this?
[MC] If the model were big companies
with big research labs, or big universities
doing a lot of research, then the
innovation would just come out of these
research activities. But nowadays, I think
that the end-users/customers are very
important sources of innovation. A lot
of innovations that we have, for example,
in the car industry and in the sports
industry, come from customers not from
research. They come from the demand.
So I believe that we should consider
research just one of the many sources
of innovation; and why neglect all the
others?
[P] Is Italy investing too much in universities
and research?
[MC] I would say that research money
shouldn’t be given to companies that
do not do research. We could probably
make better use of this money by giving
it to universities and a few companies
that really do research.
By sArA pinA*
The problem is that we have 77 universities,
but probably only ten of them
are able to generate state-of-the-art
knowledge and new businesses. The
choice is very clear. You either concentrate
your funding on those ten universities,
or you spread the money
throughout the 77 universities. If you
spread the money around, you have a
more socially-oriented model of education
and research, and every university
would be able to do a little bit of
research. But nobody will ever reach the
critical mass needed to produce a high
degree of knowledge.
[P] Is it important to learn entreperneurship
when you’re little? In primary or secondary
school?
[MC] Well, my personal view is that you
shouldn’t start too early with entrepreneurship.
You need to create young students
with very flexible mindsets; and
they need to be passionate about subjects
like engineering and science. The
important thing is for the educational
system to help them be more openminded
rather than entrepreneurial. The
entrepreneurship comes later.
[P] Wouldn’t you say that the educational system
in Europe goes somewhat against this kind
of open mindset?
[MC] I absolutely agree. In general, if
you take European undergraduate students,
and then fund them to do PhDs
or post-graduate programs in the US,
they perform very well, because their
educational background is very good.
But of course the downside is that if
they have been taught very strictly and
are from very rigid programs, they’re
often not used to being flexible. If you
take an English student or – even moreso
– an American student, they’ll probably
spend less time studying out of
books and more time enjoying themselves
and becoming creative. So there
are upsides and downsides.
*with André Sebastião
Parallel no. 6 | FALL | WINTER 2011 53