Here are some thought provoking Axiom's from Victor Hwang's book, "The Rainforest." We have his permission to quote him. This book is worth reading if you want to accelerate economic growth. If you think you know how to create business clusters then you must read this book. I would guess you are wrong. Comments are from Mike Franchell, Executive Director of the Community Based Business Incubator, Inc.(tm) How does your company compare to the Rainforest Axioms?

The Rainforest by Victor w. Hwang and Greg Horowitt

"When we think of innovation systems, we should not try to force individual innovations into existence, but we should try to design and shape the proper environment that cultivates such innovations to be born."

"The oddballs are the game changers in the innovations systems. In Rainforests, we want to nurture the weeds to grow."
First Rainforest Axiom #1: While plants are harvested most efficiently on farms, weeds sprout best in Rainforests.

A Rainforest is a human ecosystem in which human creativity, business acumen, scientific discovery, investment capital and other elements come together in a special recipe that nurtures budding ideas so they can grow into flourishing and sustainable enterprises.
Why did ProFusion fail. "The answer lies in their respective cultural environments. Yahoo---(Had) access --- to human relationships.
All the raw science and engineering talent in the world does not necessarily produce companies that can grow and thieve in the market place.

Rainforest Axiom #2: Rainforests are built from the bottom up, where irrational economic behavior reigns.

Rainforest Axiom #3: What we typically think of as free markets are actually not free.

Rainforest Axiom #4: Social barriers- caused by geography, networks, culture, language, and distrust - create transaction cost that stifle valuable relationships before they can be born.

Rainforest Axiom #5: The vibrancy of a Rainforest correlates to the number of people in a network and their ability to connect to with one another

Rainforest Axiom #6: High social barriers outside of close circles of family and friends are the norm in the world.
"we focus on ideas, talent and capital"

Key Stone - integrative, influential, impactful

Rainforest Axiom #7: Rainforests depend on people who actively bridge social distances and connect disparate parties together.

Rainforest Axiom #8: People in Rainforests are motivated for reasons that defy traditional economic notions of "rational" behavior.

Rainforest Axiom #9: Innovations and human emotion are intertwined.

Rainforest Axiom #10: The greater the diversity in human specialization, the greater the potential value of exchanges in a system

Rainforest Axiom #11: The instincts that once helped our ancestors survive are hurting our ability to maximize innovation today.

Rainforest Axiom #12: Rainforest have replaced tribalism with a culture of informal rules that allow strangers to work together efficiently on temporary projects

Rainforest Axiom #13: The informal rules that govern Rainforest cause people to restrain their short-term self-interest for long-term mutual gain.

Rainforest Axiom #14: Rainforests function when the combined value of social norms and extra-rational motivations outweigh the human instincts to fear.

As a recovering VC, builder of an entrepreneurial ecosystem and an economics geek, this book was validating, insightful, and prescriptive. It pulls together seemingly disparate intellectual threads and ties them neatly into a model for taking action. I found the word for what I do ("keystone") and connections between complexity theory, entrepreneurship, ecology, entrepreneurship and my own dissatisfaction with the math choices of economics. I don't know if this will be as useful to those unfamiliar with these domains or the rapidly evolving field of startup communities, but it's clearly a major contribution and will guide my thinking and actions for some time.

As someone who has been involved in public policy, venture capital and economic development for over a decade, I only wished this book was available to me when I started. The joke we often used = 'the only place not trying to be Silicon Valley in this world is Silicon Valley itself.' Thats because we focussed only on the tangibles and the first thing we could put a finget to was money as in "Lets have more VC dollars." This is somewhat like 'let them eat cake instead' when the basics have not been thought out.

Victor and Greg have done an incredibly fine job in shaping the content to change this mindset. A chapter in this book "Capital in the Rainforest" points out that mutualism (where both sides benefit) and that V is always bigger than C (as in the entrepreneur matters more than the money). At the heart of this book, the authors are deeply spiritual thought leaders. They say that "making more by owning less" is possible. They essentially debunk the VC approach that early stage means more ownership = higher IRR. They offer elegant and fresh solutions like subsidized capital and 'balancing of interests.'

Strongly recommended for policy makers, economic developers and VCs alike - it will change the way you see startups and your ecosystem. It will make you a responsible member of the forest.

This book delves into the core of what spawns true innovation--or rather innovative environments--the human element. Innovation is not defined by technology or scientific discoveries or brilliant ideas. It is true that these elements are essential components of the process, but they are far from sufficient. A successful innovation culture requires people, people from all walks of life, all backgrounds and expertises--people are the glue that hold it all together.

This book speaks to changes in culture, in the importance of lowering social barriers and alterations of perspective that are required to bring about the extensive (and often prohibitively difficult) collaboration that is necessary to create self sustaining innovative environments. It challenges ideas that innovation can be "engineered" from the top down and rather presents it as an organic growth, a symbiosis of tacit social contracts. True innovation comes from maximizing serendipity, it cannot be predicted, it cannot be engineered, but its conditions can be fostered. This book will change your perspective on how to enter into collaborative environments, how to interact with diverse parties, and how to change your attitude and behavior to benefit a system (and consequently yourself) that spawns truly revolutionary innovations.

The central premise of this book, that diversity within an ecosystem spawns innovation, is an elegant tool to build both companies and economies. I highly recommend this book to any entrepreneur who seeks to build a category-creating company because it shows specific examples of how partnerships and coopertition evolve new ways of solving problems by using the strengths of others to amplify the strengths of each player.