Novara Silicon Valley, the 4th cycle starts March 8th 2010

[paolo marenco]

Here you  can find the Program of the Novara Silicon Valley: La Storia nel Futuro a Economia starting March 8th at 4pm . Great program ....with SVST Alumni now speakers....

[paolo marenco]

Elisa we are trying to organize something like that in Verbania Tecnoparco...we'll talk here about it!

[taddei carlotta]

Hello everybody!
I'm sorry for the late but I had a problem with my pc!
I agree with you all....the last conference has been great! I'm really interested by Michele Simonato's products, in my opinion he 's great and really inspiring. I really appreciated the overall idea and structure of Michele's projects.It' fantastic!
I hope there will be other opportunities to meet everybody...
Have a nice day .....

[Edoardo Tosetti]

We are maybe a sort of pioneers with FYP way of thinking!I red a very interesting article on "Economy" speak about "IBM-Smart Cube"; it's a server that incorporate a lot of management softwares and each factory have a trouble go on "Smart Cube" and choose better solution!For the companies is a very quick way to get a good solution and for "Smart Cube" partners is a fantastic opportunity to get together and integrate their solutions.
I imagine FYP like a platform where meet knowledge and where people can complete each other!

[stefano siccità]

i like this comparison very much...good point of view and good ambitions =)

[Andrea Tonelli]

I wasn't there last time how i said, but i will update about this conference because it seems to have many interesting points to deepen.

Generally speaking, i think also that R&D is more useful for big companies (many motivations: costs, time of research, etc.), but if they found a way to cut the difficulty to access at this from small enterprises it's a great result and it has a wide market

[paolo marenco]

Have a glance here, great contribution fro our friend Vittorio Viarengo, Vp Vmware

[Stefano Cayre]

Eye opening article and links to other article!
Thanks!

[Marco Vescera]

Very interesting article, I remember Nicolò Borghi saying something similar about VC during the first conference.
I agree with you Stefano, the links are very useful too... In one of them there's a link to another one that's about interviewing techniques: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html . I'm sharing the link because maybe not everyone will find it and I think it's very useful also for someone being interviewed (and maybe we'll keep it in mind if we'll ever need to hire someone :-) )

[Max Brigonzi]

Finally I can come back to the forum, I've been absent for about two weeks because of a terribile exams schedule, that completely cut off my free time.
I'm happy to come back and already read interesting and useful links, thank you very much for sharing it with us!
Also, the blog itself is really interesting and inspiring.

Reading the post made me think.
I do appreciate the overall idea and innovative way of planning capital search and management. Being stuck up against investors' objectives could be, in the first phases of start-up's creatiion. This because I believe that investors not always can understand the team's ideas and projects, therefore having an already stable customers' basis that can give references and limit capital needs (thanks to the incomes) can be the best solution to have enough freedom to easily work well on personal projects. So, the venture capital can better understand the business formula, so that its ingerence can be less problematic.
Also, I liked the idea that a team is best when it is made by "the best people in the world". Also, I liked the quoted article "assumi bene e togliti dai piedi". My experience as a band player (and, in such a way, "manager") tells me that this method is the best: finding people better than you is the key to success because it stimulates to do better to reach their level, and raises the team's level, keeping it strongly united.

But a question came to my mind. Since for young entrepreneurs I think it's somewhat difficult to find perfect team partners, or already successful people, I believe that at the very start, we should consider the team as a whole, before focusing on just the individuals. Finding people one gets along well with, that can easily (both technically and humanly) cover up our faults, since no one's perfect, could be a good start. And then, only then, having already proven to be a good, knit team, start finding "the best people in the world".
A group that is a "real" team, made of motivated people that can admit their weak points and aim to correct them, working together in the right way, can be stronger, in my opinion, than a bunch of geniuses that aren't able to work together.
That's the idea at the basis of the conference I've attended here in Novara about the future of economics (during the "Eschatos" program). Crisis gave us the chance to be a bit more humble and ethical: capable of working together with ease and loyalty, admitting our limits.
That's something I believe should be considered. Perfect partners are such only if they can work in a team with the right "spirit".

What do you think about it?

[Marco Vescera]

First of all welcome back :-)
I agree with you Max, it's not easy to put together a tight-knit team, but I think that the idea of the article of A-people should be generalized: it's not just a matter of technical skills (that are, obviously, essential for most of the jobs), it's also referred to the ability of working together. The best engineer (for example), who hasn't good team-working skills, is going to be more exposed to the risk of sub-optimization of the product (again, it's just for example).

I think that admitting limits is part of being A-people, in the article "assumi bene e togliti dai piedi" ( http://siliconvalley.corriere.it/2009/12/assumi_bene_e_togliti_dai_... ) this idea is clearly present: always hire people that are somehow better than you. Again, I don't think that should be interpreted as "strictly technical", you should try to fully evaluate the person: an employee with good technical skills and who is also capable of selling and promoting the product in the right way may be a better option than an excellent vendor (who needs to be instructed about the product, or needs the presence of a "technician" to explain some of its features to the potential customers) or a very good technician. The choice is obviously related to the actual needs of the team and the enterprise.

[stefano siccità]

I agree with you, but it offen happens that entrepreneurs are used to hiring people, who have less good technical skills than them... Why? Because they maybe fear that they could be overcome by these new employees. It is not always easy to choose the best option for the enterprise and not the best one for yourself, by following this selfish thought: "Well, I'm better than him, so my job place is safe".
The point is -as you said before-admitting your limits.

[paolo marenco]

our friend Vittorio gives another great thinking point ....keep it in mind for your future!