FRANCIS PISANI

According to professor Ozgür Uçkan of Istanbul Bigli University, “Turkey’s major contribution to the internet,” goes by the ironic name of “Sour Dictionary,” or Ekşi Sözlük. The site has 36,000 authors, and over 10 million entries gathered into more than 2.5 million topics, or themes. It attracts 7.5 million unique visitors a month, out of a […]

PK Gulati is an Indian investor in Dubai, where I met him. Here’s his definition of innovation. 

“It’s Turkey’s major contribution to the Internet,” says professor Ozgür Uçkan of Istanbul Bigli University, of the site ironically called Ekşi Sözlük, the “Sour Dictionary.”The site has 36,000 authors, and an equal number of users who hope to become authors. It contains more than 10 million entries, gathered into more than 2.5 million topics, and it […]

I took this picture on Sunday in the cafe chain Kitchenette, in Istanbul, the biggest city in the Muslim nation of Turkey.Thirty six hours before Catholics’ Saint Valentine’s, customers were invited to send a love note to the company’s Facebook page.Selected messages will be printed and put into Chinese fortune cookies given to the restaurant’s customers. 

So my daughter suggested that I spend some time on a beach in Mexico to get myself out of the hole she knew I was stuck  in. To which I stupidly replied that I wouldn’t survive the relaxation. When we got back to the house, we said goodbye, glowing from the great conversation.The next morning, […]

From a distance, Dubai seems to have all the ingredients needed to become the region’s innovation hub.It has more than enough capital, except during the economic crisis of 2008, when dramatic consequences were avoided due in large part to the country’s most austere neighbor, Abu Dhabi. It has a desire to free itself from the power […]

The Winch5 project was born exactly a year ago, at the end of January 2011. After being away from my family for a few months, I had come back to Berkeley, where my future ex-wife and my daughter, Yara, were.Always generous, her mother had left for the weekend and, as we do every chance we […]

Since Africa is trying to solve problems that we in the Western world do not have, it’s tempting to say that innovation there isn’t really relevant to us. But upon visiting Africa, one realizes that to ignore its recent innovations is a big mistake.Take the case, for example, of the most modern payment technology commonly used […]

Tall and well-built, cheerful with an appearance of nonchalance, the man Inc. Magazine described as Africa’s Bill Gates is a man with a few tricks up his sleeve – as you might expect.After making his fortune with an enterprise-software company, Herman Chinery-Hesse reached higher, creating a company with a dual goal: helping the continent’s SMBs sell their products globally […]

Innovation is not what it used to be. It’s no longer limited to the usual places, to the usual social groups, or the usual personality types. As it grows in scale, and as more people throughout the world use it, it stops being the privileged space for engineers and the businesspeople who lead them.One of […]