In the face of economic, social, and political turmoil, Entrepreneur Week initiated its first parlay into Europe with Greece Entrepreneur Week (@EWgreece) to educate more than 650 aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs. The event was planned purposefully in just 20 days to provide the framework of entrepreneurship as a viable long-term solution for solving the financial crisis.
To infuse fresh perspectives and ensure diversity of opinion, Entrepreneur Week curated a 36-member delegation from 10 countries, including Perks Consulting CEO, Lauren Perkins. The delegation held panels, keynotes, roundtables, and a succession of pitch events for entrepreneurs that was highlighted by an intimate meeting on educational reform with Minister of Education, Anna Diamantopoulou as well as Constantine Michalos, President of the Athens Chamber of Commerce & Industry.
“Greece has a robust and proud culture. It’s time we wake up to the new reality of doing business and operate from a stance of strength through global collaboration, networking, and interconnection. It’s imperative we embrace a new way of thinking and building relationships. For too long Greece has been an insular economy,” stated CoLab Athens co-founder Stavros Messinis.
Greece has the opportunity to reclaim its ancient glory as a hub of global innovation. Particularly in these troubling times, Greece has a chance to capitalize on their rich history to move forward proactively with entrepreneurship. The debt crisis Greece is experiencing has been positive because it exemplifies that their current economic infrastructure was unsustainable, which opened a door for transparent discussion necessary for change.
This is just the beginning for Entrepreneur Week in Greece and its three core pillars of education, mentoring, and inspiration as critical first steps toward ensuring stability in the region and a cohesive understanding on how to create scalable and sustainable businesses.
ABOUT ENTREPRENEUR WEEK
Entrepreneur Week is a global event series bringing seasoned entrepreneurs, accomplished thought leaders, and early-stage investors to local entrepreneurial ecosystems. Through its international network, Entrepreneur Week develops opportunities and creates solutions for entrepreneurs in local communities by providing a global perspective, entrepreneurial best practices, and an action plan for implementation. Entrepreneur Week continues to bridge connections between stakeholders around the world, building a global portal of access and collaboration for communities to foster entrepreneurship and innovation.
This was originally published on YoungEntrepreneur by Lauren Perkins. You can view the original here.
New year, new toys. Consumer electronics, that is. I’m just getting back and reflecting on CES (Consumer Electronics Show), the largest tech geek kickoff of the year.
This year I got the chance to see the new consumer electronics and tech industry trends from three lenses: that of a journalist, an entrepreneur, and a marketer working with EachScape, an application creation and management platform.
This year’s gadgets and exhibits confirmed the expansion of the tech market as a whole. This results in large opportunities in the application space, which is now trending well beyond smartphones and tablets. The result? The app landscape is becoming increasingly complicated to navigate.
What is “App”lification?
One of this year’s pre-show trend predictions from Shawn DuBravac, research director for the Consumer Electronics Association, was that we’re moving from “Amplification” to “App”lification. Amplification of a company or brand’s message used to be a top KPI (key performance indicator) in the digital space. Now, content creators have the ability to use apps on a number of different screens in their audience’s life to create a robust and interactive user experience to share their story. In other words, “app”lification closes the gaps that historically have fallen between content creators and hardware or product manufacturers, resulting in a frictionless experience that seamlessly integrates with everyday life beyond just mobile phones.
Emerging App Screens
We are seeing the three-screen trifecta of the pre-tablet era disappear with more products being app-enabled than ever before. This year, CES showcased everything from cars to toys to traditional household consumer electronics like refrigerators sporting screen interfaces with built-in apps. With more screens becoming part of the daily user experience, there are an increasing number of creative solutions for entrepreneurs to consider for new products or extensions of existing products.
So what does this mean for entrepreneurs?
Fragmentation. Whether you’re creating an app that is your product and core business or you’re using an app to share content and market your business, you have multiple screens to take into consideration in your mobile and digital planning. You may decide that you need to have an application for every screen or that your target audience is primarily on one or two of the available screens.
“Both on the business and technology front, fragmentation and mobile are two sides of the same coin. Fragmentation has many dimensions – the code (iOS, Android, HTML5 etc.), the type of screen (phone, tablet, TV), and the content format (video, photo, etc.). At EachScape we are trying to help our clients solve the fragmentation problem by allowing them to create and manage across the entire landscape,” explained Ludo Collin, co-founder & CEO of EachScape.
To minimize fragmentation, EachScape lets you create, customize and/or manage apps across multiple platforms. As a marketer and entrepreneur, I found their solution to fragmentation issues to be the gem of their product. EachScape’s platform allows content producers with or without development skills to create highly customized applications that can be configured for the requirements of multiple screens, across iOS, Android, connected TV and HTML5.
Browser Preference and HTML5 Apps
Another emerging trend in the app space that assists with the fragmentation issue is the use of an HTML5 app, as Google opted to do with their iPhone app. They created an iPhone app that has limited functionality but gives the user access to many of their other products (Calendar, Docs, etc.) in their own HTML5 apps. In Google’s case, their iOS app allows users to have all their products in one place and then click a link out to the appropriate HTML5 app. In addition to iOS and Android users, we also see some users that still prefer using web browsers on blackberries and connected TVs. Apple’s operating system upgrade particularly encourages this type of user behavior by allowing you to save a web browser as a badge to your home screen.
The Key Takeaways
Expect to see more industry-wide collaboration and focus on the user interface in 2012. “App”lification is reducing barriers between content creators and manufacturers, creating a wealth of opportunity for entrepreneurs who want to get into or expand their presence in the app space.