Israeli Entrepreneur Plans a Free Global University That Will Be Online Only

Source: New York Business Times

An Israeli entrepreneur with decades of experience in international education plans to start the first global, tuition-free Internet university, a nonprofit venture he has named the University of the People.

“The idea is to take social networking and apply it to academia,” said the entrepreneur, Shai Reshef, founder of several Internet-based educational businesses.

While Detroit Slept

For those who read “The World is Flat”, this is a column by the acclaimed author, Thomas Friedman in New York Times, on the automobile industry, both in the past and looking forward into the future.

Social Entrepreneurship

Just to build on the previous post on how the rich gets richer, and the poorer and less educated seem to be left behind, I realised that increasingly, social entrepreneurship has been actively promoted in tertiary education. Personally, i have a few friends that are pretty into it. One of the more prominent groups i have heard of is SIFE (Student for Free Enterprise). Check it out at http://www.sife.org

Well, they say to teach a man how to fish rather than to give a man fish. That is supposed to be the gist of social entrepreneurship (Like all other big terms, academia can debate on the definitiion, but for simplicity sake, I’ll just stick to the fish analogy). However, i feel that in the Singapore context, the social entrepreneurship scene is still in its infant stage.  It seems to me that alot of people mix up volunteer work (give a man a fish) with social entrepreneurship (teach a man how to fish).

I have a friend who interned at one of the local stat boards that gives out funding for social enterprise. We had a chat about social entrepreneurship, and agreed that because there isn’t alot of people involved, the social enterprise ideas being generated are rather stale. I guess we cannot expect to see results overnight.

In short, I feel that SE still has a long way to go, but raising awareness amongst the population is probably the first and most effective way to go about for now.

(Since Social entrepreneurship is such a  big topic, it would be great if views are shared. Leave a comment )

Technopreneurship

For those keen at technologies and businesses, or in the local context, fondly known as “technopreneurship”, there are a few websites that might interest you.

Tech Crunch

Group-edited blog about technology start-ups, particularly the Web 2.0 sector. (my personal favourite, rather amazed by the amount of money VCs pump into web 2.0 start-ups.)

Gizmodo

An online review dedicated to gadgets, gizmos, and cutting-edge consumer electronics.

Engadget

A multilingual technology weblog and podcast about consumer electronics

Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki is a managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm and a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of eight books including The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way

Do you know more of such websites? Care to share?

Meet Mr Wikipedia

Another piece of interesting news from the Straits Times Online today. Next time you use Wikipedia, you know slighlty more about its history.
I’m not selling Wikipedia

Founder says the online resource serves more to help people than to make money

Mentor(s)

I think the word “mentor” has been used rather flippantly. To me, a mentor is someone who gives me guidance in more dimensions than just academic coaching. In fact, a mentor doesn’t give academic coaching. He/She gives life lessons.

Disneyland and the thing about Dreams

Disneyland’s “tagline”, if I may, is, “where Dreams come true”. From a branding perspective, I think it is a brilliant piece. What’s more dreamy than encouraging the young children that dreams can come true.

Perhaps it is so in America.

Otherwise, why would we be reading such pieces of news on our daily newspaper:

Mark Zuckerberg, 24, founder of Facebook, net worth of 15 billion.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin, both 35, founders of Google, net worth of 15- 18 billion

Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, and many others successful entrepreneurs are College dropouts.

How about in Singapore, one may ask.

Being someone who sees the glass half filled, I would rather latch onto the omnipotent globalization as depicted in the book “The World is Flat” – the advent of internet may eventually help produce that billionaire Internet tycoon in Singapore, which i hope is sooner rather than later.

Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia

I came across this interesting article, Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia on NY Times last year. Thought I would share.

Excerpts from the article

“The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic.”

“Much has been written about the link between dyslexia and entrepreneurial success. Fortune Magazine, for example, ran a cover story five years ago about dyslexic business leaders, including Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways; Charles R. Schwab, founder of the discount brokerage firm that bears his name; John T. Chambers, chief executive of Cisco; and Paul Orfalea, founder of the Kinko’s copy chain.”

You know how, when parents discover that their children suffer from dyslexia or attention deficit disorder, they are usually very worried about their learning process and education? Perhaps the cause for worrying is undue. These children have their own way in adapting and outshining the rest of their peers

Of Kiasu-ism and Education

In one of my entrepreneurial conversations, I was challenged by my American mentor to marry two totally different industries to bring out new ideas. For example, coffee and automobile industry. Or diving and Virtual World (I’ll leave this rather interesting thought process for another time)