S-axis Magic Dust

Living on the  S-axis between Silicon Valley, Sydney and Shanghai, I often get asked what’s the secret sauce to commercializing technology and emulating the Silicon Valley success story.

Firstly, let me paraphrase our newest board member at NICTA, Graham Hellestrand, “Commercialization takes a mix of dreams, vision, experience, determination and sacrifice”. It depends on who you talk to as to the importance placed on each of these elements, but they are all required.

As Ray Crock, the founder of Macdonalds (no I don’t imbibe) said, “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence”. And you’ve gotta believe that the recipe for persistence is a good dollop of each of Graham’s elements.

Some folk seem to think that you can put someone in the Valley for a few months, let them soak up some magic dust and then return them and together with government support…viola, you can have a ready made ecosystem. It doesn’t work like that. It’s about the soft stuff, as a former colleague, Julie Meyer says, “…and whether ordinary people are willing to pull together to achieve something extraordinary – you can’t quantify it.”

So how can YOU contribute. That’s easy! ”Be unreasonable about success. It’s not about the money if you’re a true ‘disrupter’, but about who you are and how you express yourself,” says my friend Julie.

Sprinkle a little magic dust in and around yourself in the way that you do things and become an entrepreneur hell bent on risking everything and in the process you will disrupt whole sectors and create your own S-axis.

Welcome to Yoick!  Which btw translates as PURSUIT, ‘purpose in action’, search, chase, quest, hunt – take or hold a course, shape one’s course.