The NASF expedition with Edna Pasher. Picture by @lola_vicente

I have just spent one very rewarding week in Israel. Between the 23rd and the 30th of November I have been part of a group of 9 entrepreneurs. The trip was organized and paid by ourselves. It was not a funded or sponsored travel.

I talkedMost important thing new connections and friends

But we came here to learn from the phenomenal energy of entrepreneurship and innovation in Israel. And we learnt a couple of things and above all, were inspired by Israeli entrepreneurship spirit.

Whatever we have learnt was shared with a community of over 400 entrepreneurs that are part of the #NASF community. During our stay in Israel they followed us on social networks (Twitter #NASF and the blog http://nasf.es).  Once in Navarra we are meeting up to tell them our experience first hand.

About the #NASF community

In November 2010 a group of 15 entrepreneurs from Navarra (a small province of Northern Spain of 500.000 inhabitants) travelled to Silicon Valley. The trip was called #NASF (Navarra-San Francisco). They had met on Twitter. Behind #NASF there was not the Chamber of Commerce, not a company, organization or institution. Exclusively entrepreneurs that wanted to learn first hand what entrepreneurship meant in San Francisco. They said no to public and private subventions.

The #NASF guys were so active on social networks that over 400 entrepreneurs joined their community. #NASF (http://nasf.es) became a community of people that  promote entrepreneurship and creative attitudes that issue from civil action.

#NASF people ACT a lot and DEBATE very little. Whoever proposes any new initiative to the community, has to lead it themselves. If you are a #NASF you may not say “Why don’t we do this?”, you just say “I am doing this, will you join me?”.

They meet up quite often and carry out several activities connected with entrepreneurship in their region. But #NASF is not an association. #NASF people define their movement as an attitude, a SPIRIT (their TWITTER id is @EspirituNASF “NASF SPIRIT”. There are only a few rules  they follow:

1)    It is about creativity and entrepreneurship

2)    People act always as individuals, not as organizations. Behind #NASF there is not any company, organization or institution.

3)    Just Lead!, don’t say “shall we do?”

4)    They don’t accept any kind of public money or private donations or sponsors.

We have been awarded the CLUSTERTIC 2010 “Most Innovative IT Firm Award”. The Councillor of Innovation, Business and Employment of the Government of Navarre, Mr. José María Roig Aldasoro handed out the prize.

I could hardly conceal the joy of the moment. A number of Family and Friends (and Fools) were cheering enthusiastically at the moment

José María Roig Aldasoro, Councillor of Innovation hands out the prize

My job at MARQUE is dedicated to devising, developing and marketing innovative solutions for the Internet Communication and Marketing.

I don’t belong to the kind of IT entrepreneurs that can be linked to one single area of development.

Though most people would warn you against such a non-focused approach, we are trying to develop innovative solutions on a variety of technologies. These include nowadays virtual worlds, applications for social media (i.e. Facebook), augmented reality and smart-phone applications.

Providing innovative communication solutions on the ever-changing Internet demands fast learning. Personally, I would get rather bored if I had to stay ages working with one single technological environment.

Our innovation way

1. FEEDING

On a daily basis I will read about 500 blog posts. These feeds are certainly the main source of knowledge and inspiration. I would star (select) some of then on READER and bookmark and tag others on delicious. Good ideas arise when well fed. An instance of an innovation by Marque: a. Serious gaming grows. b. Facebook Social Gaming rules. a+b: Why don’t we attempt to add social gaming mechanics to learning games on facebook?

2. VALIDATING and ADDING VALUE

Whenever inspiration arrives, it is time to share the new innovation proposal with our colleagues at Marque. We will discuss the benefits and devise a number of new approaches that will add further value to it: Language learning might be a ripe field for Facebook learning games. We might develop a graphical adventure instead of a classical building game, such as Farmville, FrontierVille and the like. It may include visiting many real cities with real venues…

3. PROTOTYPING

Designing and programming a working demo is a must for making customers understand what it is about.

4. MARKETING

A plan is needed, it includes identifying customers, financing, communication and commercial efforts. The plan is then taken into action.

5 . MEASURING

Okay. I have to admit that we are just beginning to come to terms with the necessity of measuring the results of our innovating efforts. In general , it takes at least 18 months to be ready to asses the results of any innovation, from prototyping to fully marketing.

What we are working on right now

As for the READY-TO-MARKET environments we are strong mostly at virtual worlds, augmented reality and mobile geolocation.

As for the innovations NEEDING further financing

1. The checkin Company.

Definition: Tailor made checkin applications. You name it we make it: games, foursquare-like, tourism oriented location reach applications, etc.

Customers: tourism, non profits,

When: working on it since January 2010.

Needs: partners, investors or customers.

2. Offline 3D ready offline AR browser

Definition: Augmented reality browser. 3D + 2D. It works offline-online. Good at 3D rendering.

Customers: tourism, archaeology, museums, natural parks, real estate, public works

When: working on it since January 2010.

Needs: partners, investors or customers.

3. Facebook multilingual fan pages

Definition: Multilingua Facebook pages using automatic translation plus user editing.

Customers: medium to big firms wanting to have a multilingual Facebook page where all users read in their chosen language.

When: working on it since January 2010.

Needs: customers.

4. Social Serious game for language learning (Spanish – English – Other…)

Definition: Facebook based social game for task oriented language learning.

Customers: tourism, archaeology, museums, natural parks, real estate, public works

When: working on it since May 2010.

Needs: content partners, investors or customers.