How do corporates create new places where their teams car innovate, or re-innovate? What are the rules that make a hackerspace a place where ideas can turn into prototypes? Why do the GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple) all open new headquarters in 2015-2016? We decided for a simple methodology which analysed each unit of our corpus through 5 criteria: Size: what superficy? how many members? what kind of funding? Openness: how open is it to other communities? to city-dwellers? to clients? to entrepreneurs? Interdisciplinarity: what fields are these places working on? Partnerships: how many institutions are gathered in the place of innovation? Valuation: what follow-up for the innovations created in different places? Our corpus included about 35 different places we have been visiting, from Nigeria’s CC-Hub to the Shenzhen Maker Faire, as well as Coca-Cola Accelerator in Singapore. To sort these samples, we decided for a six-part corpus: Tech giants from the US, namely the GAFA: as they all renew their HQ, it’s time to see how they intend, by doing so, to conquer new markets. Corporate accelerators: a recent trend, which has large corporations open places where tech startups can find a subsidised space. Corporates can get a financial interest (equity, revenue sharing) to hosting innovative companies in their industries. Community powered spaces: coworking spaces, hackerspaces, makerspaces, fablabs would fit into this category. Usually, the community pre-exists the space (through events), and decides to open a space when a critical mass allows it to get enough memberships to break-even. Government-powers clusters: for sake of a better name, these are usually large, big clusters funded in totality or significantly by governments, who hope to create replicas of the Silicon Valley to attract talent (or retain it), create jobs. Events, tech festivals and conferences: the mythology of events such as SXSW, the CES in Las Vegas or any other conference and/or demo and/or unconference is that many things happen in the discussions, after parties and casual meetings that happen in or at the fringe of the venue itself. International networks: probably one of the most digital and recent trends, some networks such as Sandbox or the Kairos society don’t have a specific place (or a virtual one: Facebook groups, Slack communities), span many countries, and breeds innovation on specific segments (people below 30, social entrepreneurs, etc).

1. Places of Innovation Talk @ CUASIA - January 2015
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2. What we do
• A world tour of startups &
innovation in the emerging
markets
• A tech media reporting on each
visited country, city, event,
innovative phenomenon
• A consultancy to link up
corporates, government and
industry associations with
innovation
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3. Why such a report?
• Identify different models of
innovation across the world
• Create a typology to better
understand the places of
innovation
• Help a large French
corporation to better design
and manage its “Innovation
Space”
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4. Methodology
• Taille (Size): what superficy? how many
members? what kind of funding?
• Ouverture (Openness): how open is it
to other communities? to city-
dwellers? to clients? to entrepreneurs?
• Interdisciplinarité (Interdisciplinarity):
what fields are these places working
on?
• Partenariats (Partnerships): how many
institutions are gathered in the place of
innovation?
• Valorisation (Valuation): what follow-up
for the innovations created in different
places?
• v2: adding Timeframe, Adaptability
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5. Corpus
of our research
1. Tech giants in the US
2. Corporate accelerators
3. Makers
4. Government powered clusters
5. Events and tech festivals
6. International networks
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6. Google Bay View Campus, 102km2, Silicon Valley
Keyword: Health (100% fresh air, light, yoga) 6

7. Facebook Hacker Campus, 40km2, Silicon Valley
Keyword: Collaboration (2800 engineers in ONE room) 7

8. General Electric Garages, Lagos, Nigeria
Keyword: Employability (of future GE employees) 8

9. Coca-Cola Innovation Labs, 8 buddy teams across the world
Keyword: Exfiltration (barely any links to the corporation) 9

10. La Paillasse, Paris: largest open-science place of Europe
Keyword: Interdisciplinary (from biohacking to multi-lab) 10

11. TAMI, Tel-Aviv’s Makerspace
Keyword: Wiki (all the activity of the group is documented) 11

12. NUMA, Paris: One storey for each stage of the ecosystem
Keyword: Centralisation (of all players in one place) 12

13. Konza City, Kenya: a $14.5bn Silicon Valley in the desert
Keyword: Off-ground (lost in the desert) 13

14. Echelon: South-East Asia’s largest tech conference
Keyword: Satellite (10 mini-Echelon organised in 10 countries) 14

15. Maker Faire Shenzhen, the biggest Maker event
Keyword: Popular (a familial event with lot of education) 15

16. Sandbox, a network for bright below 30. 1000 members in 86 countries
Keyword: Diners (by and for Sandboxers, monthly)
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17. BlueSeed, the startup boat in international waters
Keyword: Outlaw (no visa or ethics apply) 17

18. Outcome & Perspectives
• No secret recipe, no one size fits all, a LOT of test & try
• Communities always pre-exist the space they occupy,
manage, grow, with maturation times ranging from a few
weeks to a few months/years
• Governments love all what’s big and fat: pharaonic projects of
Silicon Valley replica built as infrastructure without community
are bound to fail
• Education (makerspace, events…) and Valuation (tech giants,
corporate accelerators…) seem to be two poles of the Places
of Innovation
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19. Get in touch
We’d love to get your feedback, or tell you more about the
full version of the report.
You can reach us at:
• www.innovationiseverywhere.com
• martin@innovationiseverywhere.com
• +65 9235 4234 (Singapore timezone)
This presentation was originally designed & shown at the Coworking
Unconference Asia in Bali, January 2015 (http://www.cuasia.co/)
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