Zortrax has determined the details of a prestigious contract with one of the biggest computer manufacturing companies in the world – Dell. 5,000 Zortrax M200 printers will be manufactured and shipped in 2014, with the Zortrax M200 being the flagship product.

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.

Think of Austrian business success and the first company that probably springs to mind is Red Bull. However, the alpine nation has a bright startup scene, with a venture capital deficit instilling entrepreneurs with a sink-or-swim mentality.

Since the peak of Arab Spring activity in January 2011, subscriptions to news content delivered via text message have increased by almost 1500 per cent in Egypt as the public continues to rely on its mobile phones and SMS services for breaking information during times of unrest.

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.