Ganesh Krishnan is the founder of one of India’s first call centers. One day, he saw a cartoon in an American newspaper: in it, a father is saying to his daughter, “No, you can’t outsource your homework to India.” Krishnan hung the cartoon on his office wall. Eventually, he thought, “Why not?” And that’s how TutorVista was born. His interest piqued, Krishnan researched the area, talking to parents and professors in the U.S. and India. …

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I talked to Christian Vanizette, co-founder of MakeSense.org, in Paris. Here’s his definition of innovation.

Silicon Valley’s relationship with time is perhaps what separates it most from the rest of the world, from what I’ve seen so far in these trips. The entire system in California is based, for solid economic reasons, on the speed of conception, execution and exit strategy (M&A or IPO). Its built into the way apps are developed, with the notion of a beta version being to get a product on the market as soon as …

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Mumbai-based entrepreneurs Mahesh Murthy  and Vishal Gunda know each other but don’t work together. Both are, like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, successful college dropouts, and both now work with startups. To do this, each created what Murthy calls an outcubator. “The Indian Google will be Google, and the Indian Facebook will be Facebook,” Murthy says. But India needs other services and startups. The real challenge is finding a way to help them grow in …

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Tony Surtees (@hyperlocalist) is the CEO of Hyperlocalist. I met him Australia, where I asked him his definition of innovation. http://vimeo.com/40224374

Starbucks has competition. Café Coffee Day, an Indian chain with 1,300 locations, is on its heels. The coffee is different, but just as good. Its advantage will come from the way it uses tech, which is a bit ironic when you recall that the American chain is originally from Seattle, not far from Microsoft. Heading the project is Rajeev Suri, former head of marketing at a Bangalore IT services giant. Wanting to no longer lead …

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The billion dollars that Facebook paid for Instagram – much of it in stock options – seems like a lot of money to buy a company that isn’t even profitable. But one of the reasons for the acquisition of the smartphone photo-sharing app is Facebook’s pending IPO. More importantly, its an apparent confirmation that everything happens in California, and that a global tour of innovation might not be a good idea. Instagram’s founders,  Michael Kriegerand …

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Docsuggest, launched in January 2010 in Hyderabad (central India) is a startup similar to dozens of others I’ve met. Not novel enough to justify a tour of the world, except when you look at the advanced metrics. We are in India. The idea is simple: when you’re sick, it’s hard to find a doctor, and even harder to get an appointment. The obvious geek response: aggregate the data and make it accessible. A little logic …

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With their country’s small population and geographic isolation, Australians are fans of crowdsourcing, which lets them work with millions worldwide. “We’re the world leaders. It’s our future,” says Ross Dawson, co-author, with  Steve Bynghall, of Getting Results From Crowds (Advanced Human Technologies, 2011). If he’s right, it would be the result of a strange mix of cultural and geographic accidents and adaptations. The ‘accidents” are the result of a handful of Australian entrepreneurs who hit …

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Onno Purbo (@onnowpurbo) reuses radio frequencies and other wavelengths to help give the poorest and most poorly served access to the Internet. His favorite method – not really a secret, since it’s open source – is a wifi antenna made from a wok, the most common pan in South East Asia and Indonesia, where Purbo lives. He calls it “wajanbolic“, which translates to “wokbolic.”  It’s an initiative mixing tech and social good. His wife also …

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