FRANCIS PISANI

Israel has two key elements needed to succeed in the information-technology sector: Nobel Prizes (symbolic of the quality of high-level education) and the capital to invest  in startups. Both are things that make Silicon Valley so strong.You just need to bring the two together. This is the function of  Yissum, a company created by the Hebrew […]

I dined recently at a fabulous Tel Aviv restaurant with  Ayelet Noff and Motti Peer, partners and heads of  Blonde 2.0, a site helping companies use social media better. The two are young and handsome, and their clients are some of Israel’s most dynamic and the world’s largest. People who succeed with a smile. They’re very […]

South Africa has some strong performers in its Internet and communications technologies (ITCT) activity, but the country doesn’t seem to be making them a real part of its development strategy, and that’s too bad.Let’s begin with the SuccessesPaypal was born from the fusion of two companies, one of which was X.com, created by South Africa’s Elon […]

When Scientific American recently wrote about the progress in artificial intelligence, it profiled two IBM supercomputers: Deep Blue, which defeated the world champion Gary Kasparov in chess, and the Jeopardy-winning Watson. The other company it profiled is the little-known Mobileye, an Israeli firm whose strength lies in EyeQ, a chip with a dimension of only one […]

Sometimes it’s hard to say whether innovation comes from somewhere else or if it’s local. Nandu Madhava was born in Boston, US, and raised in Texas, where he studied finance. He recently launched mDhil, a start-up that provides medical information via SMS, in his parent’s hometown of Bangalore, India.Vir Kashyap is the Chief Operating Officer of Babajob a […]

Ollie and Anantya are two extraordinary Indonesian geeks, “techpreneurs,” as they call themselves. Ollie, 28, whose real name is Aulia Halimatussadiah, is a computer-science graduate who has written a series of e-books, maintains several blogs, and helps run several communities of tech enthusiasts, investors and educators interested in digital technologies. She’s also written 20 books, […]

Right now,  webmasters are trying to figure out to protect sites from Flame, the latest major malware to emerge. 100% security doesn’t exist, but part of the response to the virus might come from Bangalore, India, where iVizSecurity, a company specializing in penetration testing, is located.Penetration testing simulates attacks to discover a system’s weaknesses. iVizSecurity is doubly innovative, […]

Beginning with Steve Jobs, design is an essential part of innovation. It is also plays one of innovation’s most important strategic roles. Silicon Valley relies on it to preserve its advantage over places that merely “manufacture.” The case of India can prove it right; more so, it seems, than Brazil would.Whether trained in  Bangalore, Mumbai, […]

Entrepreneurship isn’t always about getting rich. Sure, some entrepreneurs are mainly driven by financial gain, but a growing number want their companies to have greater meaning. They can innovate in important ways, beyond the technical aspects. This is the sort of company that Tandem Fund, located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, wants to help.“We invest in social […]

Ganesh Krishnan is the founder of one of India’s first call centers. One day, he saw a cartoon in an American newspaper: in it, a father is saying to his daughter, “No, you can’t outsource your homework to India.” Krishnan hung the cartoon on his office wall. Eventually, he thought, “Why not?” And that’s how TutorVista was […]