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Hervé Lebret: taking chances good idea

Posted on the May 9th, 2008

The missing ingredient in European culture is risk-taking, according to a post yesterday in the InformationWeek blog (“Where Is Europe’s Google?” by Andrew Conry-Murray, May 8, 2008).

The post focuses on a recently published book by Hervé Lebret, “Start-Up: What We Can Learn from Silicon Valley” (Nov 2007).

Summarizing the issue, Conry-Murray writes:

London may be eclipsing Wall Street as the world financial capital, and the euro is trouncing the dollar, but Europe has yet to prove the equal of the United States in technological innovation.

Author and engineer Hervé Lebret thinks he knows why. “There is a risk culture that’s missing. We don’t have an environment to be more ambitious and risk-taking.”

Another place where you can read a discussion with Lebret about his ideas on innovation, and about his book and its primary purpose, is a recent Q&A interview, “Entrepreneurship in Europe: Alumnus brings Silicon Valley culture across the Atlantic,” on Stanford University’s School of Engineering website (April 24, 2008).

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