FRANCIS PISANI

The markets are in the north, the talent in the south, and the technology is everywhere. This is the formula that Globant, an Argentinian enterprise-software company, built its strategy on. And it works. Created in 2002 with $5,000 (3,800 Euros), it now employs 2,500 people, has four offices in the U.S., one in the U.K., and […]

Some people, like  investor Amon Kohavi (@arnonk), might have reasons to critique Startup Chile. But the program, created by the Chilean government to encourage the creation of innovative companies, is worth checking out. Which I did in Santiago, on the way to Australia.The offer is simple and seductive: $40,000 US given to global entrepreneurs to house […]

Where good ideas come from (article in French), and where they’re read.Photo taken at Pollenizer, a dynamic Sydney incubator that I’ll talk about again. 

Located in the historic center of one of the America’s oldest cities, Porto Digital is a technology park that has made the northeastern city of Recife Brazil’s third IT hub, behind São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. The park is the result of efforts of a group of computer-science professors who were tired of watching […]

Where was Einstein born? You probably don’t know (I don’t), but no big deal: Wikipedia, Google, Yahoo and Bing, to name a few, can give you the answer almost instantaneously. But if you want to find the best book for exploring his theory … then things get hard.Search engines and encyclopedias can answer any objective […]

It’s that time again. I’m writing this in Recife, the first city I’m visiting during my first “real” world tour. By this I mean that, after Mexico, North Africa and part of the Middle East, this time I headed west out of Paris, and am coming back from the east. During which I’ll lose a […]

A good lesson for someone traveling the world in search of innovation is that you can also learn about it by staying in one place for a few days. This happened to me at the Netexplo Forum, held March 15-16 at UNESCO’S Paris headquarters.According to Thierry Happe, who co-founded the annual event with  Martine Bidegain, […]

Despite their country’s  110,000 square kilometers  and 10 million inhabitants, Cubans used to joke 30 years ago that they had the largest country in the world: our population is in Miami, our army is in Angola, and our capital is in Moscow, they’d say. In some ways, Lebanon’s situation  (10,000 km2, 4.2 million inhabitants) resembles […]

Despite their mere 110,000 km2 and 10 million inhabitants, Cubans used to joke 30 years ago that they had the largest country in the world: our population is in Miami, our army is in Angola, and our capital is in Moscow, they’d say. In some ways, Lebanon’s situation (10,000 km2, 4.2 million inhabitants) resembles Cuba’s. […]

When Otavio Good sees the word “salida” in a Spanish-speaking country, he thinks of “salad” instead of “exit.” To avoid the embarrassment that can result from mistakes like this, the Mountain View developer created WordLens, a smartphone app that instantly translates texts, from signposts to menus, with a simple camera view.Right now the app can translate […]