Photos of Red Herring ETRE 2008 can be found here on Flickr - so please feel free to tag them ...   more »

I posted a new photo to Photos.
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I posted a new photo to Photos.
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Friends have been telling me for years that I need to hear J-P speak, so I was keen to get to this segment. What I was surprised by is that he is such a simple operational salesman. Straight forward box and licence shifting is a major part of his life. Probably the right way to get to the top in his job. His view is that impact on software is patchy and not predictable at the customer company level, and that the impact is being felt worldwide at about the same level across territories. With IT investment being 50% of most CEO’s decisions, this is a tough time, so the winner – if it is be Microsoft – will emerge from winning market share in a down cycle. CIOs are being told to cut budgets by 30%.   more »

Alex Vieux, Marcus Wallenberg, Giles McNamee and Norio Wada, among others, talk about the state of the world today. Alex used the Darwinian evolution statement. Has he been reading this blog, I wonder? This Credit Crunch is a global financial event and is still echoing around the global community. The idea of globalisation, so new at ETRE 1, is now the keys both to understanding the scale and consequences, and to taking advantage of the changes. Long timescales give long perspectives. With a quick canter around the BRIC countries, it was straight into the first major segment.   more »

I posted a new photo to Photos.
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I posted a new photo to Photos.
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Dinner. The Vasa Warship. Events like ETRE serve a vital a purpose in joining together all of the elements of the business community and engendering trust. At a time like this, when the markets based on trust have collapsed all around the world, it is only face-to-face communication and meeting people which is going to restore that vital element upon which all businesses based: trust.   more »

Some small companies got toasted. I came away from the innovation session having realised that there were some amazingly clever venture capital companies with serious long-term investment profiles who were not only ready, but willing, fully capitalised, and in many ways determined, to buck the negative trend that seems to be emanating from places like Sequoia capital, and their ilk.   more »