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Lego’s participative army marches on .. by Michel Bauwens

One of the highlights was Mark Hansen, director of Business Development at Lego, who has been focusing his life’s work on spurring co-creation processes between Lego as a corporate community and the legions of fans that are normally operating independently of the company.

Mark’s instinct go into the opposite direction of learning to tap further and further into it, and to develop mutually beneficial relationships.

But what we want to focus on here are VC funded web 2.0 ventures that got to profitability as standalone ventures.

The point here is, what other Web 2.0 companies have been funded by VC and have reached profitability? Surely there must be some more? Did all the 2003/2004 era Series A funded ventures either exit or fail? Or are some on the cusp of profitability, with enough investor cash to get them there? Even with revenue forecasts that may need to be to brought down as a result of a slowing economy?

Tuning innovation policy to the characteristics of industries Innovation policy tools fit more or less the needs of industries. We try to understand which kind of industry is more impacted by which tool, therefore allowing a better tuning of the policy mix to suit the characteristics of targeted industries and the national priorities. Management of innovation We would like to contribute to fill the gap between the needs of companies wanting to improve the efficiency of their innovation system and academic research where most teams pursue a deep understanding of very focused issues. We organize (together with colleagues of Ecole polytechnique and universities of Paris) many workshops where professionals and scholars meet to discuss real practices. We focus on organizing ‘open innovation’ relying on building networks in order to combine and integrate the best technologies or to realize the potential of a technology, on a better understanding the behavior, expectations and latent needs of users, on the design of new business models.

Policy Brief 2008/03 Europe's R&D: Missing the Wrong Targets? This Policy Brief address two challenges: First, Europe is failing to live up to the target set in the Lisbon agenda to increase public and private-funded investment in R&D to 3 percent of GDP. Can Europe catch up? Second, since countries have different industrial specialisations, do targets for business funded R&D investment make any economic sense? [download the report] THE AUTHOR Bruno van Pottelsberghe [meet Bruno] POLICY BRIEFS A Tail of Two Countries[read it] Europe's R&D: Missing the Wrong Targets?[read it] Is Structural Spending on Solid Foundations?[read it] Financing Europe's Fast Movers[read it] Why Europe is not Carbon Competitive[read it] Why Reform Europe's Universities?[read it] Is Europe Ready for a Major Banking Crisis?[read it] Global Imbalances: Time for Action[read it] A Better Globalisation Fund[read it] Global Governance: An Agenda for Europe[read it] A Primer on Innovation and Growth[read it] Single Market Trails Home Bias[read it] Farewell National Champions[read it] Welcome to Europe[read it] Last Exit to Lisbon[read it] The Euro: Only for the Agile[read it] Global Current Account Imbalances: How to Manage the Risk for Europe[read it] Globalisation and the Reform of European Social Models[read it] Bruegel Rue de la Charité 33 B-1210 Brussels Belgium +32 2 227 4210 info@bruegel.org