Culturally and structurally, tech start-ups and established corporations could not be more different. However, it is these differences that, if managed properly, make their collaboration a process ripe with possibility for both parties.

What do a German Razor Factory, an American Thermostat Firm and a Drones business led by a Greek entrepreneur have in common? They are all vertically integrated plays.

Julie Meyer is the highly visionary and multi-talented founder of www.entrepreneurcountry.com which is an innovative and exciting global discovery platform for digital companies, providing them with vast networking opportunities and access to crucial top-level industry information.  Julie is also Chairman and CE of Ariadne Capital, as well as a Dragons' Den online judge.  In my opinion, Julie is a phenomenal success both personally and professionally, because through her integrated world system philosophy of Ecosystem Economics™, she quite simply gets the biggest of big pictures.

Truphone, the only mobile operator in the world that expands the reach of businesses beyond the borders of their home country, today announces the expansion of its ‘Truphone Zone’ to include Poland, Germany and Hong Kong.

Enterprises everywhere are going all-in with mobility. They are arming their sales force with tablets, setting up enterprise app stores, enabling BYOD, and developing a mobile policy. But what does it get them? Sure it’s cool and hip, but do they know what value mobility is intended to bring? What is the real return on investment in mobility?

How things have changed. I remember my first mobile phone “Motorola” being what we all used to call “a brick” with the ability to send a text message, make a call or play Snake. We went from no internet to dial up to WiFi and Broadband. The internet is a very confusing world and some people are still struggling to grasp the concept of the evolution that is the World Wide Web.

“This house believes that academic education will never satisfy the skills needs of the IT Profession” was the title of last week’s Oxford Union style debate, jointly hosted by BCS Chartered Institute for IT (via Learning Development Specialist Group) and the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, at Armourer’s Hall in the City of London.

Following on from my post about the concept of innovation as something you do, and not just something you say, I came across an example of what I would consider innovation in action, courtesy of a newly launched digital music distribution/promotion service called Music2Text.

Great News for the CEOs of large companies! There are entrepreneurs out there working on solving the problems that you face running your FTSE 100 business, or your medium-sized enterprise of 1000 employees, or your multinational. You have scale, distribution, reach, audience, established brand and reputation: you are a highway.

Whether you’re a start-up or an FTSE 100 corporation, your success is tied to your ability to understand, and partner with, your natural allies in the market. You can no longer think of yourself as a silo, or a sole trader, or a standalone business. We live in a networked world. It took 89 years for the fixed-line telephone to achieve an adoption of 150m users, and 38 years for the TV to get to the same point. The mobile phone achieved it in 14 years. The iPod in seven. Facebook in five