Future is Free to Play #01
As a guy with a strong business management background I love to be exposed to new business ideas and especially disruptive business models.
Since I work in a very innovative company with its roots strongly grounded on the internet business I get to be exposed to many different approaches to business and ways to make money on the digital era.
I have always been fascinated by Chris Anderson books “The Long Tail” and “Free”… I read this books when I was still in college and I always felt that my university (ISCTE Business School) should have some kind of classes where more disruptive business models like freemium or free-to-play where discussed among the students.
The truth is that in the modern times we live in, digital businesses with disruptive business models are becoming increasingly important for the overall economy and this business models many times diverge from the traditional management thinking of the bricks and mortar businesses.
Unfortunately my country (Portugal) is having hard times with its economic growth and government debt, everyone agrees that Portuguese companies need to innovate, gain scale and export as much as possible.
Many times I think to myself if internet based businesses are not one of the best options for Portuguese companies, I believe that internet based businesses targeted to countries like Brazil and other Latin American countries are still a huge opportunity to Portuguese companies once they are generally underserved, economic metrics are improving at an impressive rate and there aren’t huge cultural gaps (at the end of the day we are all Latin and we all love beer and sunshine).
The problem is that in Portugal we don’t have the needed ecosystem to really grasp this opportunity… our entrepreneurs are still very conservative and don’t really have the knowledge needed for this type of businesses, financial Institutions are even more conservative when it comes to loan money to internet based Start-ups (even more on this economic depression stage) and we lack a really Venture Capital and Business Angel funding system.
As a proud Portuguese and an entrepreneur wannabe I really hope this to change otherwise I will need to consider leave my country to chase my dreams.