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Internet Incubators Are Still Hip in Paris
They are passe in the U.S., but in France it's a different story.
By Casey O'Brien Blondes
For years, the French government has subsidized offices and research labs for young companies. But inspired
by the Internet, a new generation of private incubators are playing an important role in the country's new economy.
Many of the new incubators are based on the U.S. model and are located in "Silicon Sentier," Paris' former
garment district that has become a bustling area for dot-com companies.
Entrepreneurial activity in France has cooled somewhat due to the recent downturn in international financial markets
and many startups never made it out of the gate. Others are facing tough times now that public capital markets
are less accessible. Incubators have felt the impact, too, and have had difficulty raising venture funding themselves.
But incubators are still key players in France, especially since like other European countries, the country does
not have many experienced Internet entrepreneurs to provide seed funding and advise young startups.
Founders of most French incubators have had exposure to the U.S. Internet Economy either through schooling or stints
at multinationals. That has given French incubators an American flavor that's evident in company names such as
Startup Avenue and Kangaroo Village.
Incubators are becoming increasingly out of fashion these days in the U.S. The June IPO of U.S. incubator Divine
Interventures, for instance, proceeded after several delays and raised only about half of the company's $250 million
target. And Orbit Capital, an arm of the $12 billion investment adviser Orbitex Group, recently closed its incubator
and will focus on venture investments.
Not so in France, where Tocamak is one of the latest to the party, recently receiving $6 million in venture funding
and officially launching in June. Following is the scoop on four of France's most prominent incubators.
Foreign Affairs
It takes more than translation to remake a site internationally.
By Tim McCollum
Cisco Systems (CSCO) became a global networking powerhouse thanks to the Web. But the company didn't fully appreciate
the international implications for its Web site until traffic started pouring in from Barcelona, Beijing and Berlin.
Like most U.S.-based sites, Cisco's was published only in English, so it wasn't much use to potential customers
who spoke Spanish, Mandarin or German. If Cisco wanted to win their business, it would have to speak their language.
Cisco.com is now published in 10 languages, and it links to 52 country-specific sites managed by the company's
local sales and service offices. [See "¿Habla Worldwide Web?" Oct. 26, 1998.] Cisco's site generates
sales of $70 million a year from outside the United States and attracts more than 175,000 international customers
each month. That's almost a tenfold return on a $6.95 million investment in globalization over the last three years.
The company is clearly ahead of the competition in the international arena. Over half the people with Internet
access reside outside the United States, according to the Computer Industry Almanac. Yet nearly two-thirds of leading
U.S. companies publish their Web sites only in English, reports Forrester Research (FORR) in Cambridge, Mass.
Creating an international Web site requires that companies globalize their strategies and technological infrastructures
to do business throughout the world, and that they localize content, products and services for each country. And
it's not simply a matter of translating information into other languages. Enterprise and Web systems must be able
to deliver content and process transactions using different languages, character sets and currencies. Companies
need to know the ins and outs of doing business and marketing to customers in different countries, and be mindful
of the various business practices, regulations and customs they will encounter abroad.
In addition, companies have to serve international customers on an ongoing basis. Token gestures, such as offering
up a few foreign-language screens and dated content, won't cut it. With international markets growing, global Web
efforts must be an intricate part of a company's e-commerce strategy.
Yet many businesses are buying and setting up enterprise software without any foresight about their global needs.
"There's an enormous amount of money being left on the table by companies on the Web," says Don DePalma,
VP of corporate strategy for Idiom, a localization software and consulting firm also based in Cambridge.
Some companies have separate content management systems for their U.S. and overseas sites, which is both costly
and time-consuming. Other international sites have no content management at all; they rely on products such as
Idiom's World Server and Uniscape's Global Content Manager to automate translation and synchronization of content
across all sites.
Most international Web sites are still translated by humans, but workflow-management software takes much of the
administrative work out of the process. The other alternative is automatic translation, but that isn't as reliable
as software combined with the personal touch. Although faster, automatic translations are often inaccurate because
software can't handle idioms and other variations in word usage among languages.
Cisco.com uses a human-translation system that was developed with outside vendors. After a brief flirtation with
developing its own software, the company brought in Lionbridge Technologies (LIOX) ' LionTracker, a workflow-management
system that automates the process so staff can make cultural changes and tweak the translations appropriately along
the way.
LionTracker's memory capability allows staffers to save time by using previously translated text, and its translation
repository lets them store existing documents for later use. As a result, Cisco has been able to cut translation
costs by 60 percent, according to Donna Soave, senior manager of the company's global information connections unit.
Recently, Cisco added Interwoven (IWOV) 's TeamSite content-management system as a common publishing platform across
its various Web pages. With this technology in place, the company then disbanded the unit that managed global content
for Cisco.com.
Although Cisco manages the site's back-end systems centrally, it relies on its 52 local offices around the world
to maintain language-specific pages and ensure that documents are relevant within countries. Offices in each division
also publish their own pages to support local customers.
This type of combination regarding content management and translation workflow is critical in globalization projects.
"Our e-publishing initiative really empowers the folks in the global offices to do what's necessary for their
customers," says Soave. "But it allows us to have a little bit more leverage over what we do in different
countries, and it gives us more control over our brand."
LINK GLOBALLY
The complexity of going international is one reason companies like E-Trade start out by targeting specific markets
and then build a global offering over time. It's better to get things right in a few key markets than to get things
wrong everywhere.
"Do you need to put a site in 23 languages? You might not be able to," says Michael Anobile, managing
director of the Localisation Industry Standards Association, a Geneva-based trade organization for translation
and localization vendors and consultants. "The real question is picking the markets where you should be present."
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