Chapter | Short summary | Long summary | tag | Citation | Link | Source | file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
IP | People like Carl Djerassi show us that implementing a significant change—like introducing the birth control pill to society—comes from a combination of ideas collected from different environments with different people, institutions, or organizations. | Youtube | Annual Reviews. “A Conversation with Carl Djerassi.” April 13, 2012. Video, 1:11:57, https://youtu.be/OVL8FKitRLM. | ||||
Corporate innovation in decline | According to Innosight’s 2016 report “Corporate Longevity: Turbulence Ahead for Large Organizations,” corporations in the S&P 500 Index in 1965 stayed there for thirty-three years on average. By 1990, the same index presented a reduction in the average tenure to twenty years. The future is even more revealing, with a forecast of only fourteen years by 2026 | Report | Anthony, Scott D., S. Patrick Viguerie, and Andrew Waldeck. Corporate Longevity: Turbulence Ahead for Large Organizations. Innosight, 2016. | Report | |||
Europe Startups | 1. Entrepreneurs are less celebrated in Europe than in the US: “About 17 percent of press coverage in Germany portrays entrepreneurship in a positive light, as compared with 39 percent in the United States. 2. In Europe, there is a lower concentration of entrepreneurs: “Innovation ‘superhubs’ are not as densely packed with resources as those in the United States. Only about 30 percent of European startups have located their headquarters in a tech superhub (Berlin, London, Paris, Stockholm)—versus almost half of US startups.” The result is lower interaction and, consequently, less serendipity. | McKinsey | Baroudy, Kim, Jonatan Janmark, Tobias Strålin, Abhi Satyavarapu, and Zeno Ziemke “Europe’s Startup Ecosystem: Heating Up, but Still Facing Challenges.” McKinsey & Company. Last updated October 11, 2020. | McKinsey | |||
Today, we live in an age of exponential technologies that drive our world forward—to name a few, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, 3D printing, blockchain, cloud computing. These digital technologies use network effects that can scale much faster than what we’ve previously experienced in the industrial world | HBR | Bonchek, Mark. “How to Create an Exponential Mindset” Harvard Business Review, July 27, 2016. | HBR | ||||
Rapid Change | As Peter Diamandis mentions, we will experience more change in this decade—2020 to 2030—than in the past one hundred years | Website | Corbyn, Zoë. “Peter Diamandis: ‘In the next 10 years, we’ll reinvent every industry’.” The Guardian, January 25, 2020. | Website | |||
Only 13% engaged | Report | Hagel, John, John Seely Brown, Maggie Wooll, and Alok Ranjan. “If You Love Them, Set Them Free.” Deloitte Insights. Last modified June 6, 2017. | Report | ||||
Young people losing hope | During the COVID-19 pandemic, a study in the UK surveyed 2,000 people aged sixteen to twenty-five, showing more than half (57 percent) of young people is “scared” about being unemployed and that 43 percent are worried they will never be able to get a job | Article | Harding, Charlotte. “Young People Losing Hope of Achieving Future Dreams Due to Pandemic.” SussexWorld, October 27, 2020. | Article | |||
Europe: 2x United States; 3x China publi; Europe only 25 percent of new biotechs | Europe is a powerhouse in scientific publishing with roughly twice the output of the United States and three times that of China...Despite Europe’s strength in science and innovation, translation remains the biggest challenge. Translation of science into companies is stagnant. The distribution of newly funded biotechs remains unchanged across geographies over the last six years, and Europe accounts for only 25 percent of new biotechs. Future success will depend on improving the translation of research into new companies, raising more capital, and building entrepreneurial talent.” | McKinsey | McKinsey | ||||
Tencent and Alibaba: 1/3 of their revenues from $ in startups | “Of course, even with the best in-house talent and innovation process, companies cannot come up with the best ideas on their own. That’s why a complete innovation ecosystem requires collaboration with external innovators.“ Of course, even with the best in-house talent and innovation process, companies cannot come up with the best ideas on their own. That’s why a complete innovation ecosystem requires collaboration with external innovators. Just look at successful tech companies Tencent and Alibaba: according to the Financial Times, they generate over a third of their revenues from investments in external startups | HBR | Osterwalder, Alexander, Tendayi Viki, and Yves Pigneur. “Why Your Organization Needs an Innovation Ecosystem.” Harvard Business Review, November 15, 2019. | HBR | |||
Lack of appreciation and recognition | that 65 percent of employees reported a lack of recognition, and 79 percent of people who quit their jobs cite “lack of appreciation” as their reason for leaving. | Report | Performance: Accelerated, A New Benchmark for Initiating Employee Engagement, Retention and Results. Salt Lake City, UT: O.C. Tanner Learning Group, n.d. | Report | |||
Covid; change beahavior and creation of new startupsstartup | On top of that, unpredictability is a new reality. McKinsey & Company investigated the latest trends in the article “The Next Normal Arrives Trends That Will Define 2021—and Beyond.” The article explores recent findings related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects: forcing people to work from home, boosting digital transformation, and changing consumer behavior in the long run. Furthermore, an increasing number of startups are being created, and more and more people are deciding to launch their businesses | McKinsey | Sneader, Kevin, and Shubham Singhal. “The Next Normal Arrives: Trends for 2021.” McKinsey & Company. January 4, 2021. | McKinsey | |||
Great Resignation goes global | The COVID-19 crisis also pushed millions of workers to quit their job. This trend, called “The Great Resignation,” is mainly noticeable in the US and globally | Article | Article | ||||
65% people and skills. 41 Innovation Network | “How would you rate the importance of the following potential building blocks of corporate Idea & Innovation Management (I2M)?” Seventy-eight corporate innovators participated in the study. The outcome is telling. People and Skills ranked as the most important building block of Idea and Innovation Management, at 65 percent. This is followed by Innovation Network (41 percent), Organizational Structure (40 percent), and Innovation Portfolio (37 percent). This clearly shows that mindset, people skills, and networks are the most important elements in the innovation process—not tools or processes. | publication | Unold, Florenz. “Development of a Visual Tool to Design and Assess Operating Models for Corporate Idea and Innovation Management (I²M).” (master’s thesis, Goethe University Frankfurt, 2021). | Publication | |||
1/3 no access safe water. 4.2 no sanitization facility | Globally, a third of people globally don’t have access to safe drinking water. That’s one in three people—representing 2.2 billion people around the world. As if that’s not bad enough, “4.2 billion people do not have safely managed sanitation services, and three billion lack basic handwashing facilities” | Website | World Health Organization (WHO). “1 in 3 People Globally Do Not Have Access to Safe Drinking Water—UNICEF, WHO.” World Health Organization press release, June 18, 2019. World Health Organization website. | Website | |||
Startup in France | President Macron vowed in 2018 to make France a “startup nation” | Website | Alderman, Liz. “Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?” New York Times, May 23, 2018. | Website | |||
invented entirely new services or products ; new business model ; incumbent, or companies, irrelevant | Clayton Christensen often named as the father of the term disruptive innovation, defined two types of invention in his famous 1995 Harvard Business Review article “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave” (Bower and Christensen, 1995): The first type of innovation, also called “business as usual” entails simply improving the existing systems, structures, and established ways of doing things. The organization’s services, products, procedures, structures, and identity remain the same. This type of innovation is called sustaining innovation because it sustains business as usual. The second type of innovation described by Christensen is disruptive innovation. He identified a wide range of cases where competitors caught out companies. The competitors had invented entirely new services or products with a new business model that made the incumbent, or “business as usual” companies, completely irrelevant. Common examples of disruptive innovation are Amazon, which disrupted the book-selling industry, and Netflix, which disrupted Blockbuster. It also exists in the scientific world: Genentech was also a disruptive company (now belonging to Roche). They disrupted the pharmaceutical landscape by introducing new biotechnology, e.g., cloning genetically engineered DNA in foreign cells and mass-producing the resulting drugs. (Leuty, 2016) | HBR | Bower, Joseph L. and Clayton M. Christensen. “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave.” Harvard Business Review, January–February 1995. | HBR | |||
increased output in the Industrial Revolution | Time monitoring pushed workers to work long hours and increased output in the Industrial Revolution | Website | Chong, Alvin. “In-depth: Time Consciousness and Discipline in the Industrial Revolution: The story of how time came to govern the industry, and then life.” SJX Watches. Last modified July 21, 2020. | Website | |||
quote | “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” | Forbes | Engel, Jacob M. “Why Does Culture ‘Eat Strategy for Breakfast’?” Forbes, November 20, 2018. | Forbes | |||
An estimated Half of new ventures are started by teams, with founders recruited from their networks. | An estimated Half of new ventures are started by teams, with founders recruited from their networks. Entrepreneurship is a team sport - event at the founding stage. Being connected to others is vital"f | Book | Feld, Brad, and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2020. | Book | |||
1. The great depression of 1929 to 1933: 2. The emergence of key technologies 3. The low-interest-rate 4. “Startup America,” | Yesterday’s Innovation Came from R&D Labs; Innovation Labs and Startups Will Drive Tomorrow’s Innovation and Economy Let’s face it: Today’s most significant digital innovation does not come from large corporations; it comes from startups. What has led to so many startups, and what is the relationship to today’s digital, multistakeholder, and bottom-up economy? According to Brad Feld in his book The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, four significant events shaped the new economy: 1. The great depression of 1929 to 1933: Employees felt insecure and not part of their company anymore due to the crisis. Young people started to think about how else they could contribute to society. Opportunities evaporated from New York City, and many moved to California (today’s Silicon Valley) to start businesses. 2. The emergence of key technologies: In the early 2000s, ubiquitous high-speed internet, smartphones, and cloud computing finally made starting a business from anywhere not only possible but also cheaper and more accessible. 3. The low-interest-rate strategy adopted by central banks worldwide: Persistently low interest rates pushed unprecedented amounts of financial capital into startups globally. Investors searched for riskier assets, such as venture capital, to generate higher returns. This continues today. 4. A broader set of actors pushed the entrepreneurial movement forward: President Obama announced “Startup America,” a national initiative designed to cultivate startup community development throughout the United States. Many other venture capital funds followed, which focused on early-stage investment, as did the growing number of corporate venture capital groups. With that, a range of support mechanisms, like accelerators, incubators, and other models, snowballed in size and scope. | Book | Feld, Brad, and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2020. | Book | |||
Pharma = sourcing externally | Pharma companies, for instance, are increasingly sourcing new molecular entities from startups because the variety of innovative strategies means more chances of success | Report | Geilinger, Ulrich, and Chandra Leo. HBM New Drug Approval Report: Analysis of FDA New Drug Approvals in 2018 (and Multi-Year Trends). Zug, Switzerland: HBM Partners, 2019. | Report | |||
Stop beeing secretive | One of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world realized it had to change. “Roche used to be so secretive...But now they are doing things they wouldn’t have done before. There has been a wind of change” | Website | Hollinger, Peggy, Donato Paolo Mancini, and Andrew Jack “Roche Boss Who Says Bitter Pill of Truth Is Only Way to Build Trust.” SWI swissinfo.ch, April 25, 2020. | Website | |||
Def Exp Tech | It is a technology that doubles in power or processing speed in every prescribed slice of time while its cost of ownership halves | Website | IGI Global. What is Exponential Technology. Accessed January 8th, 2021. | Website | |||
This paper provided a framework for how Boston successfully built its “innovation capacity” in the life sciences and became one of the most innovative places in the world in just twenty years. In 2008 then-Governor Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts legislature created a ten-year, one-billion-dollar initiative to transform Massachusetts from a leading life sciences academic research hub to a world-leading life sciences innovation hub, where new technologies could be translated, developed, and commercialized. Today, Boston is recognized as the best life science ecosystem globally. Patrick’s team, including Susan Windham-Bannister, focused on building the long-term goal of innovation capacity: knowing how to produce one innovation after another on a sustained basis. In Windham-Bannister’s framework, innovation capacity was built around five enablers. 1. Academic culture 2. Entrepreneurial culture (including risk capital) 3. Workforce 4. Infrastructure 5. The ecosystem Boston succeeded because it utilized a backbone organization called Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MSLC) to build a thriving ecosystem. The multi-layered nature of this network, which included investors, founders, scientists, and corporations, resulted in new pipelines for resource transfer throughout the network. They made diversity (different stakeholders and talents) and collaboration core principles. They also defined a clear purpose, a long-term shared view, and a structure to attract players. | publication | Joseph, Diana, Susan Windham-Bannister, and Mikel Mangold. “What Corporates Can Do to Help an Innovation Ecosystem Thrive-and Why They Should Do It.” Journal of Commercial Biotechnology 26, no. 1 (March 16, 2021). | Publication | ||||
Genetech: engineered DNA in foreig cells | Genentech was also a disruptive company (now belonging to Roche). They disrupted the pharmaceutical landscape by introducing new biotechnology, e.g., cloning genetically engineered DNA in foreign cells and mass-producing the resulting drugs. | Article | Leuty, Ron. “40 Years After Genentech Set Biotech Industry Standards, Is It Still Disruptive–Or Disrupted?” San Francisco Business Times, May 20, 2016. | Article | |||
1,4 Millionen - Backbone German Economy | Deutsche Gründerlandschaft kann 1,4 Millionen neue Jobs bis 2030 schaffen. | McKinsey | McKinsey & Company. “Deutsche Gründerlandschaft kann 1,4 Millionen neue Jobs bis 2030 schaffen.” McKinsey & Company press release, October 26, 2021. McKinsey & Company website. | McKinsey | |||
Unilever: stakeholder / trust / faster | Paul Polman is the former CEO of Unilever, and Andrew Winston is a globally recognized expert on megatrends and how to build companies that thrive by serving the world. They co-authored the book Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, wherein they talk about how Unilever was ahead of its competitors during the world-changing COVID-19 crisis in 2020. “Unilever, moved faster than its peers because of the trust it has built up with stakeholders over the years.” | Book | Polman, Paul, and Andrew Winston. Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2021. | Book | |||
Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy | Daniel F. Prosser highlights that the strategy is not the issue. It’s about the execution made by the people working at the firm. | Report | Prosser, Daniel F. Thirteeners: Why Only 13 Percent of Companies Successfully Execute Their Strategy—and How Yours Can Be One of Them. Austin: Greenleaf Book Group Press, 2015. | Report | |||
96% / UK / making decisions on autopilot mode | People with an entrepreneurial mindset are ones with a DO-IT-YOURSELF attitude. How can you be one of them? The autopilot working style is alive; ninety-six percent of people in the UK admit to making most decisions on autopilot mode | Article | Razzetti, Gustavo “How to Stop Living Life on Autopilot.” The Adaptive Mind (blog). Psychology Today. November 1, 2018. | Article | |||
Innovation DNA: 1. innovation strategy <> business strategy. 2. Company-wide cultural support 3. Leadership <> Innovation 4. Contact End Users 5. Rigorous control of project selection early 6. Integrating 5 avove | To surf the wave of change, companies need to have a leadership embracing and promoting innovation as well as employees acting as “innovation agents.” Most of the time, people think money solves everything, but as the PwC report “2018 Global Innovation 1000 Study” states, “dedicating more funds to innovation will not automatically generate growth.” The report identifies six characteristics (referred to as the innovation DNA) that the most innovative companies—Microsoft, Apple, Volkswagen, and Samsung—have in common: 1. Close alignment of innovation strategy with business strategy. 2. Company-wide cultural support of innovation. 3. Leadership is closely involved with the innovation program. 4. Base innovation on direct insights from end-users. 5. Rigorous control of project selection early in the innovation process. 6. Integrating the five characteristics above together. Companies can copy that model and try to innovate like the best companies in the world. However, I have noticed this top-down strategy is not enough. | Youtube | “2018 Global Innovation 1000 Study: What the Top Innovators Get Right”. October 29, 2018. Video, 2:36. | Youtube | |||
Transformative innovation def | The kind of innovation that disrupts an industry is, according to the literature, called transformative innovation. | Website | Terwilliger, Jay. “The Three Levels of Innovation.” The Innovation Blog. Creative Realities, September 30, 2015. | Website | |||
1% from startups in 2015; 40% from startup in 2025; decline of R&D | innovation coming from the outside world is becoming increasingly relevant for companies: “Over the next five years, startups will rank as top innovation sources for companies. Moreover, hybrid forms such as innovation labs are essential as an interface between internal and external innovation. It is even more relevant for companies that do not have to innovate internally. Many are forced to source externally. As a result of this development, traditional R&D and internal business units’ employees will become less relevant as innovation sources within the next five years.” The study’s authors surveyed over 320 global companies and asked them about their top three innovation sources; internal (central R&D, Innovation Labs with dedicated and operational business staff) vs. external (suppliers, universities, third party, customers, startups, competitors, crowd). According to the respondents, 69 percent of innovation came from R&D, 33 percent from innovation labs, and only 10 percent from startups. The study’s author prediction for 2025 looks significantly different: • 29 percent from R&D • 71 percent from innovation labs • 44 percent from startups | Report | Thompson, Neil, Didier Bonnet, and Sarah Jaballah. Lifting the Lid on Corporate Innovation in the Digital Age. Paris: Capgemini, 2020. | Report | |||
“tribes,” “chapters,” and “guilds” | An article on the blog Agile Radicals explains how Spotify introduced the terms “tribes,” “chapters,” and “guilds” to replace heads and teams with temporary staff based on the project size and skills needed. This is the way to go, and it works. | Website | Agile Radicals (blog). “The Spotify Model (2/2),” | Website | |||
Philosophers and mathematicians 2000 years. Creativity = tapping into their social capital (their network) to gather ideas | Secondly, the 1998 study “Global Theory of Intellectual Change” analyzed the network of philosophers and mathematicians in Asian and Western societies spanning two thousand years. The study showed that the secret behind an individual’s exceptional creativity was the ability of an individual to tap into their social capital (their network) to gather ideas | Report | Collins, Randall. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998. | Report | |||
City = increased interaction and connection with experts | Cities make people interact, which helps them learn, build on each other, and grow. Cities are considered key environments for the emergence of innovative interactions and relationships. This is why creative and innovative industries tend to localize in vibrant urban environments; so, people can exchange knowledge and connect with experts, specialized suppliers, designers, customers, and workers to create new products and services | Book | Concilio, Grazia, Chuan Li, Pau Rausell, and Ilaria Tosoni. “Cities as Enablers of Innovation.” In Innovation Capacity and the City, edited by Grazia Concilio and Ilaria Tosoni, 43-60. New York, NY: Springer, 2018. | Book | |||
hierarchies = suitable for tight control of production, information, and resources. | According to Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway in their book The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem, companies used to work in hierarchies, which was suitable for tight control of production, information, and resources. | Book | Feld, Brad, and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. 2020. | Book | |||
Mycelium network = roots, underground, transfer oxygen; hydrogen; | For instance, the mycelium network of mushrooms is a great way to understand the power of networks. We have all seen mushrooms on the ground, but have you seen the other part of the mushroom, the part living underground? That part goes very deep underground. The mushroom’s “roots” interact and connect with tree roots as a vast network. This network transfers water, nitrogen, carbon, and other minerals to individual plants. The more extensive and denser those networks are, the healthier the forest is. Those networks are called the mycelium networks (Fricker et al., 2017) | Fricker, Mark D., Luke L. M. Heaton, Nick S. Jones, and Lynne Boddy. “The Mycelium as a Network.” In The Fungal Kingdom, edited by Joseph Heitman, Barbara J. Howlett, Pedro W. Crous, Eva H. Stukenbrock, Timothy Y. James, and Neil A. R. Gow 335-367. Washington, DC: ASM Press, 2017. | Publication | ||||
unpredictability = neural activity in the amygdala and to elicit anxiety-like behavior | Our world is full of unpredictable events. According to research published in The Journal of Neuroscience, “unpredictability is sufficient to induce sustained neural activity in the amygdala and to elicit anxiety-like behavior” | Herry, Cyril, Dominik R. Bach, Fabrizio Esposito, Francesco Di Salle, Walter J Perrig, Klaus Scheffler, Andreas Lüthi, and Erich Seifritz. “Processing of Temporal Unpredictability in the Human and Animal Amygdala.” The Journal of Neuroscience 27, no. 22 (May 30, 2007): 5958-66. | |||||
Working across networks; enablement of bold; risk taking, new processes; tackling bigger problem, | I insist that we should reduce hierarchies. Working in networks will encourage bold thinking and maximize interaction with the external world. Networks promote the possibility of working with the most talented individuals, who are not afraid of failure but accept it as part of the learning process and tackle big problems. These people are interdisciplinarians and visionaries (Ishak, 2017). | Ishak, Waguih. “Creating an Innovation Culture.” McKinsey & Company. Last modified September 28, 2017. | McKinsey | ||||
= Maximizing serendipity -> Coffee hourse | “Many of history’s great innovators managed to build a cross-disciplinary coffeehouse environment within their private work routines.” | Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From: The Seven Patterns of Innovation. London, England: Penguin Random House, 2011. | Book | ||||
We reject complexity < favor of simplicity. | In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman—psychologist, behavioral economist, and Nobel laureate—says the human mind rejects complexity in the world in favor of simplicity. | Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. 2017. | Book | ||||
all behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfor | As Nir Eyal, author of the book Hooked: How to Build Habit-forming Products, writes in his article on motivation, all behavior is prompted by a desire to escape discomfort. Everything we do is about the need for homeostasis to restore psychological balance | Nir and Far. Exactly What Is Motivation? Surprisingly, Not What You Think. Accessed February 23, 2022. | Website | ||||
Linear system thinker / Network -> Complex systems | People looking for processes and structures are linear system thinkers; they avoid diversity, making predictive models more challenging and harder to calibrate and maintain. Networks are complex systems, but there, variety is of central importance. It builds resilience and produces different outputs and results | Page, Scott E. The Diversity Bonus: How Great Teams Pay Off in the Knowledge Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017. | Book | ||||
Reducing hierarchies by introducing agile teams | Having fewer hierarchies can work by introducing more agile teams. As described in the 2018 Harvard Business Review article “Agile at Scale,” “agile teams are usually small and multidisciplinary. Once confronted with large and complex problems, the teams break into modules” | Rigby, Darrell K., Jeff Sutherland, and Andy Noble. “Agile at Scale.” Harvard Business Review, May-June 2018. | HBR | ||||
Watching scientists = they changed their experiments based on their discussions | Kevin Dunbard, a psychologist at McGill University, studied scientists to understand how they made their discoveries. In the early 1990s, he decided to take a new approach to scientific discovery. Instead of reading biographies and asking scientists how they made their discoveries, he decided to simply watch them as they worked. He set up cameras in their labs and recorded as much as possible. In addition to that, he also interviewed them about the advancement of their research. Dunbard found that scientists changed their strategy and tried a new experience based on their discussion with other scientists. More importantly, Dunbard discovered that the best ideas emerged during regular lab meetings. Dozens of researchers would gather and informally present and discuss their latest work. The “distributed reasoning,” where several scientists come together to understand and solve a problem, distinguished the successful scientists from the others. Innovation did not come from the microscope but rather from the conference table | Weiss, Rick. “Researchers Go from A to B to Discovery.” Washington Post, January 26, 1998 | Publication | ||||
The root of the sequoia trees typically grows two to five meters | A similar astonishing network can be found in sequoia forests in California. Its biggest tree, the “General Sherman,” stands eighty-three feet (275 meters) tall and is over thirty-six feet (eleven meters) in diameter at the base. This tree is estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,700 years old. The root of the sequoia trees typically grows around eleven to fourteen feet (two to five meters) deep (Monumental Trees, 2022). | Monumental Trees. General Sherman, the Biggest Tree in the World. Accessed February 23, 2022. | Website | ||||
SF = quantity and quality -> 10x Berlin | The StartupBlink report “Global Startup Ecosystem Rankings 2021,” ranked ecosystems of 1,000 cities and one hundred countries. They refrained from using subjective tools such as surveys and interviews, and instead utilized data either accumulated directly from the StartupBlink map or arrived from their data partners such as CbInsingts, TechCrunch, etc. Using artificial intelligence and algorithms, a final total score was generated to represent the innovation output and the startups they generate, in terms of quantity and quality. It found that San Francisco and Silicon Valley outperforms the rest of the world in terms of both the number of startups and innovations. San Francisco Bay (Silicon Valley) was ranked first with a total score of 328,966. New York was second (110,777), followed by Beijing (66,749), Los Angeles (58,441), London (56,913), and Boston (49.835). Tel Aviv ranked eighth, Paris eleventh, and Berlin thirteenth, out of thousands of cities. While this is just one study with a specific algorithm, it nevertheless shows how advanced the region is. | Global Startup Ecosystem Index. Tel Aviv: StartupBlink, 2021. | Report | ||||
Silicon Valley Investor: big and bold ideas | In the Mindvalley online course, “The Power of Boldness,” well-known entrepreneur Naveen Jain talks about the importance of mindset when building a business. He specifically refers to the investor mindset of Silicon Valley, as opposed to the rest of the world. If he pitched the idea of launching a rocket to the moon, Silicon Valley investors would reply, “Tell me more; how would you do this?” However, most investors from elsewhere would say, “Please don’t waste my time; get out.” If your idea is too big or bold, they won’t hear you out. | Jain, Naveen. “The Power of Boldness.” Mindvalley online course, January 2021. | Website | ||||
Moonshot = a lofty goal requiring monumental effort—a giant leap | Silicon Valley’s culture can be described as the moonshot mindset. “Moonshot” is a term used to describe a lofty goal requiring monumental effort—in other words, a giant leap (Merriam-Webster, 2022). An example of this is the Human Genome Project, a three-billion-dollar, fifteen-year effort to map the approximately 100,000 human genes. As we can only scratch the surface of this topic here, I’m going to focus on the mindsets of Silicon Valley’s investors and entrepreneurs. | Merriam-Webster. s.v. “moonshot.” Accessed January 10, 2022. | Website | ||||
identify a problem or develop a particular piece of technology - using a backbone organization | In January 2021, I interviewed Gregory Theyel, the founder of the Biomedical Manufacturing Network (Mikel Mangold, 2021). His organization is on a mission to understand the need of a company, detect how they fit in the network, and how they can benefit from it. Greg works with different companies but mostly tries to help small ones with five to fifty employees. These small companies usually identify a problem or develop a particular piece of technology. Still, they are not aware of many things. For example: • How to connect with a contract manufacturer • Where to find a specific type of adhesive • Which sensor to choose “I feel there is a perception that people can just google something and find the answer, but it’s not quite true. In most cases, it’s the specialty insight that a network can provide. Without it, it becomes an importing missing piece of the puzzle,” shared Greg. His organization is funded by the government, with the purpose of connecting people, connecting a big company with a startup or a university with mature companies. They make those essential connections to these larger systems. | Youtube | |||||
“The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” | Entrepreneurs think in terms of transformative ideas that most people deem impossible. As Peter Diamandis, an entrepreneur best known as the founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation and co-founder and executive chairman of Singularity University, puts it, “The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.” By definition, entrepreneurs need to think beyond today, and they also behave differently. It’s okay if most people don’t understand your idea right away. Entrepreneurs have a big vision about what the world looks like in five or even ten years. Having a big vision comes with a growth mindset and willingness to fall and learn from failures. | Peter H. Diamandis, MD (@PeterDiamandis). “Peter’s Law #22: The Day before Something Is a Breakthrough, It’s a Crazy Idea.” Twitter, December 24, 2012. | Website | ||||
Richest Country on earth. $128,308 per capita | Silicon Valley is famous for its vast economic successes. As an article in The Guardian puts it, “If Silicon Valley were a country, it would be among the richest on earth.” Silicon Valley earns $128,308 per capita annually in gross domestic product; its residents outproduce almost every nation on the planet (Pulkkinen, 2019). | Pulkkinen, Levi. “If Silicon Valley Were a Country, It Would Be among the Richest on Earth.” The Guardian, April 30, 2019. | Website | ||||
Incredible apple store revenue | Laura Ceci and Jon Erlichman reported that Apple’s App Store revenue since its inception is staggering. 2009: $769 million 2010: $2 billion 2011: $3 billion 2012: $5 billion 2013: $10 billion 2014: $15 billion 2015: $20 billion 2016: $29 billion 2017: $39 billion 2018: $47 billion 2019: $56 billion 2020: $72 billion | Ceci, Laura. “Apple App Store: Annual Gross App Revenue 2017-2021.” Statistica. December 13, 2021. | Website | ||||
Incredible apple store revenue | Laura Ceci and Jon Erlichman reported that Apple’s App Store revenue since its inception is staggering. 2009: $769 million 2010: $2 billion 2011: $3 billion 2012: $5 billion 2013: $10 billion 2014: $15 billion 2015: $20 billion 2016: $29 billion 2017: $39 billion 2018: $47 billion 2019: $56 billion 2020: $72 billion | Erlichman, Jon (@JonErlichman). “Apple’s App Store revenue: 2020: $72 billion 2019: $56 billion 2018: $47 billion 2017: $39 billion 2016: $29 billion 2015: $20 billion 2014: $15 billion 2013.” Twitter, November 24, 2021. | Website | ||||
Being connected with others is vital to found a company | Brad mentioned that an estimated half of the new ventures are started by teams, with founders recruited from their networks. “Entrepreneurship is a team sport—even at the founding stage. Being connected with others is vital” | Feld, Brad, and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2020. | Book | ||||
“There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” | If you decide to be a change-maker, don’t play it small. Why should people stop once they succeed to impact a thousand lives? Let’s make a difference in a billion lives—why not? As Nelson Mandela said, “There is no passion to be found playing small in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.” (Goodreads, 2022). It is sad if your creative idea never goes outside your village or city. The world needs it. To create real change in our world, what matters is your idea’s scalability, and this can only happen through dozens, hundreds, thousands of collaborations. | Goodreads. Quote by Nelson Mandela: “There is no passion to be found playing small -...”. Accessed February 25, 2022. | Website | ||||
Steve Jobs not wanting the iphone | The iPhone has completely changed our society, and its story is fascinating. Did you know that Steve Jobs didn’t want to make a phone? (Grant, 2021) I assume we all know who Steve Jobs was. What about all the collaborators that brought this idea to life? The people who worked with Steve Jobs are one of the reasons why Steve—and Apple—were so successful. The excellent talents working with him were able to bend his reality and persuade him with new ideas. At that time, Jobs believed the network providers would have too much power over the consumer, deciding who could access their network or not. Jobs thought it would be too hard to collaborate with them and interact with the consumers directly. His team persuaded him he should do it, and Jobs finally agreed. Later, he didn’t want any outside apps. It took another year for him to reconsider this. Finally, the firm launched the App Store in 2007. Within nine months after the launch, the Apple Store experienced a billion downloads, and a decade later, the iPhone had generated more than one trillion dollars in revenue. According to the research of Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton University, most of the time, people in power are not listening. We all know leaders who are overconfident stubborn. “When someone tried hard to alter their thinking, they snapped back like a rubber band” Our jobs as aspiring change-makers are not to stop being creative if someone says no. We have to learn to join forces with others and persuade that person. Steve Jobs was confident in his thinking, but he invited people to challenge and help him overcome his own worst instincts. People like Tony Fadell were one of them. Tony is the inventor of the iPod and a co-creator of the iPhone. He worked for months with his engineering team to change Steve’s objections and build networks around him to make his idea possible. Tony is a master persuader and used the power of networks—him and his team—to change and influence Steve’s mind. This shaped the story of the Apple we know today. To sum this up, having an idea is great, but if nobody listens to it, the idea will never take off the ground. The chapter reminded me how important it is to think about scaling to produce and change something meaningful in this world. Your relationships are everything, and your network will magnify your company and product. | Grant, Adam. “Persuading the Unpersuadable.” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2021. | HBR | ||||
Not taking risk | Around 67 percent of American employees can cite at least one reason that stopped them from taking a risk at work | Haudan, Jim. “Creating a Culture of Risk Taking—How Do We Risk Our Assets to Keep Growing, but Not Put Everything at Risk?” Inc.com, October 27, 2016. | Website | ||||
Sue Windham Bannister | Susan Windham-Bannister is a business leader and world-renowned expert in open innovation and innovation ecosystem. She consults companies in strategy, market access, and healthcare policy analysis. She was named one of the ten most influential women in biotech by The Boston Globe in 2013 | Kirsner, Scott “The 10 Most Influential Women in Biotech.” The Boston Globe, September 15, 2013. | Website | ||||
“If data is king, then context and emotion are queens.” | Another memorable event featured the trained and established storyteller Michael Margolis at the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center in San Francisco. He presented the research for his book, Story 10x: Turn the Impossible into the Inevitable, wherein he highlights, “If data is king, then context and emotion are queens.” Why do stories matter so much in business? Susan explained that a story conveys the vision with conviction and goals. It helps explain how a person sees it working, what they’re trying to do, what they need, and what support they require to bring the vision to life. As she pointed out, “Stories explain the why and how people can contribute.” Good stories share what the present looks like, what the future can be, and how you see that vision unfolding from the beginning to the end so people can see what you hope will ultimately happen. People want to be inspired and motivated to do something. Good stories help to accomplish this. Susan emphasized that good stories include personal experiences and show data points to convince people to change. They also show how people can fit in. “Good stories are critical for developing the networks that will be formed around those ideas.” | Margolis, Michael. Story 10x: Turn the Impossible into the Inevitable. Vancouver: Page Two, 2019. | Book | ||||
Iphone - Carrier issue | For years, he insisted he would never make a phone. In 2005 he said, “The problem with a phone is that we’re not very good going through orifices [carriers like Orange, T-Mobile, or AT&T] to get to the end-users” | Merchant, Brian. “The Secret Origin Story of the iPhone—An Exclusive Excerpt From The One Device.” The Verge, June 13, 2017. | Website | ||||
Serial Entrepreneurs | Have you heard of the “PayPal Mafia?” According to Charlie Parrish’s Business Insider article “Meet the PayPal Mafia, the Richest Group of Men in Silicon Valley,” PayPal employees and founders are called the PayPal Mafia because after founding PayPal, they founded multiple world-leading companies like Tesla, LinkedIn, Palantir Technologies, SpaceX, Affirm, Slide, Kiva, YouTube, Yelp, and Yammer. Peter Thiel, the former CEO of PayPal, became a billionaire after investing early in Facebook and other ventures. Before joining PayPal as a chief operating officer, Reid Hoffman tried unsuccessfully to build several companies, like Social Net. After PayPal’s acquisition, Reid was called “the most connected man in Silicon Valley.” It is no surprise that he co-founded LinkedIn within the same year that PayPal was acquired. Today, LinkedIn is the most extensive professional network globally (Parrish, 2014). Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Reid Hoffman are billionaires, and even now they are actively founding, mentoring, and investing in startups. While they certainly have a talent for building businesses, their considerable wealth comes from their relationships. | Parrish, Charlie. “Meet The PayPal Mafia, The Richest Group of Men in Silicon Valley.” Business Insider, September 20, 2014. | Website | ||||
People make decisions without clear intentions, | People with an entrepreneurial mindset are ones with a DO-IT-YOURSELF attitude. How can you be one of them? The autopilot working style is alive; ninety-six percent of people in the UK admit to making most decisions on autopilot mode (Razzetti, 2018). People make decisions without clear intentions, and sometimes, it is not rational. | Razzetti, Gustavo “How to Stop Living Life on Autopilot.” The Adaptive Mind (blog). Psychology Today. November 1, 2018. | Publication | ||||
“That network helps you get intelligence, enables you to get the right resources, and drive forward” | Reid Hoffman talks about the importance of both the company’s and the people’s networks in his keynote address at the 2011 Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit. When building a new company or business, heading toward an unknown and uncertain destination alone is generally a recipe for failure. The key is to assemble a network to make something more likely to succeed. “That network helps you get intelligence, enables you to get the right resources, and drive forward” | Stanford eCorner. “Reid Hoffman: Entrepreneurs Will Create the Future [Entire Talk].” July 07, 2011. Video, 42:56. | Video | ||||
I am an introvert who wants to create | I am an extrovert and talk to anyone, but I know this is not the case for everyone. In a conversation with Steve Wozniak—the co-founder of Apple, very often called “Woz”—he told me and other students in a live Zoom call, “I wanted to be an engineer for life and avoid all the visibility and politics of big organizations. I am an introvert who wants to create” (Wozniak, 2021). Steve Wozniak was the engineer behind Apple’s success; Steve Jobs was the operating talent. Woz wasn’t the operating talent; he admits he was simply the technical guy. It was the combination of both skills that made Apple successful. | Wozniak, Steve. “Steve ‘Woz’ Wozniak - Creator Speaker Notes (Summer 2021).” Interview by Eric Koester. Creator institute. June 23, 2021. Video, 29:02. | Website | ||||
You did what your parents did. | Therefore, it is hard to do what we love because we unconsciously want to fulfill these societal expectations. In her TEDx talk, “The Psychology of Career Decision,” Sharon Belden highlights that “throughout much of human history, people didn’t choose a line of work. You did what your parents did. What you did for a living was prescribed from where you were from, your gender, and your social class.” This is what I experienced in my own life and see again and again in my friends’ families. We are usually pushed to follow the path of our parents. When our parents try to guide us, they typically tell us what they’ve done or were told to do, without necessarily trying to understand what drives us to what we are passionate about. | Belden Castonguay, Sharon. “The Psychology of Career Decisions.” Filmed April 7, 2018 at TEDxWesleyanU, Middletown, CT. Video, 12:26. | Video | ||||
13% passionate and engaged at work | Hagel, John, John Seely Brown, Maggie Wooll, and Alok Ranjan. “If You Love Them, Set Them Free.” Deloitte Insights, June 6, 2017. | Report | |||||
Location = firing different neurons | Research shows that being in new locations impacts how our brains work. So, moving to a new environment will fire you up as different neurons in your brain fire, which helps you stay agile, competitive, and fearless. | Houston, Eric. “How Rats, Bats, Bees, and People Navigate Their Worlds.” Association for Psychological Science, July 29, 2016. | Publication | ||||
Abroad = creativity | In a study led by William Maddux, the aim was to test if there was a link between living abroad and creativity (Maddux, 2009). In five studies employing a multimethod approach using American and European students, the results were as follows: • Studies 1 and 2 provided initial demonstrations that time spent living abroad (but not time spent traveling abroad) showed a positive relationship with creativity. • Study 3 demonstrated that priming foreign living experiences temporarily enhanced creative tendencies for participants who had previously lived abroad. • Study 4 showed the degree to which individuals had adapted to different cultures while living abroad and how it boosted creativity. • Study 5 found that priming the experience of adapting to a foreign culture temporarily enhanced creativity for participants who had previously lived abroad. In a world where resilience is everything, crossing and blowing up borders can boost our self-confidence and make us better leaders and human beings. | Maddux, William and A. D. Galinsky. “Cultural Borders and Mental Barriers: The Relationship Between Living Abroad and Creativity.,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no.5 (2009): 1047-61. | Publication | ||||
100M workers may need to switch occuptation | Changing roles to see the big picture can help us discover where we perform best. Doing so is not just a “nice to have” but will soon be a “must-have.” Many of us will be forced to—in the next decade, over one hundred million workers may need to switch occupations | Meakin, Lucy. “100 Million Workers May Need to Switch Occupation by 2030.” Bloomberg, February 18, 2021. | Website | ||||
importance of getting multidisciplinary exposure. | Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, supports the importance of experimenting with different positions in different departments: "Don’t underestimate the importance of getting multidisciplinary exposure. Most people get worried when they have to make those jumps. I’ve had a career at Novartis where I’ve worked in commercial areas and marketing areas—so most of my time in R&D worked across four different areas of the business—and so with that diversity of experiences it enables you to make the right decisions” (Narasimhan et al., 2021). Changing roles to see the big picture can help us discover where we perform best. Doing so is not just a “nice to have” but will soon be a “must-have.” Many of us will be forced to—in the next decade, over one hundred million workers may need to switch occupations (Meakin, 2021). | Narasimhan, Vas, Jorge Conde, Vijay Pande, and Sonal Chokshi. “a16z Podcast: The Science and Business of Innovative Medicines.” January 13, 2019. Podcast, MP3 audio, 59:02. | Podcast | ||||
Unengaged Worforce | In Germany, it is only about 15 percent | Nink, Marco. “Only 15% of Employees in Germany Are Engaged.” Gallup Business Journal, July 1, 2015. Accessed February 19, 2022. | Report | ||||
engaged = >> competition 147 percent in earnings per share | This is a disaster. An unengaged workforce affects our society, businesses, and everyone. In a survey of thirty million employees, it was found that companies with a highly engaged workforce outperformed their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share | Sorenson, Susan. “How Employee Engagement Drives Growth” Gallup. Last modified June 20, 2013. | Report | ||||
Love what you do. Don't settle until you find it | Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. He said it for a reason. Changing the world requires a lot of passion because this passion will help you stand up when something in life puts you down. One of the ways to thrive, create solutions, and change the world is to build networks by blowing up imaginary societal borders. | Stanford. “Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address.” March 8, 2008. Video 15:04. | Video | ||||
Startup Weekend | co-founded Startup Weekend, a three-day innovation competition attracting aspiring entrepreneurs who want to experience startup life. Mark organized it hundreds of times between 2014 and 2018 in various cities in China and other Asian countries. In 2015, Startup Weekend was acquired by Techstars. As of 2021, Techstars has operated the three-day event in over 150 countries with more than 428,000 participants | Techstars. Techstars Startup Weekend. Accessed December 16, 2021. | Website | ||||
Expending the cognitive map | When we talk and network with people outside our discipline, we feel empowered. Why? Because it expands our cognitive map. Edward Tolman discussed that humans and other animals have a “cognitive map” that allows them to navigate their everyday spatial environments (Tolman, 1948). | Tolman, Edward C. “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men.” Psychological Review 55, no. 4 (1948): 189–208. | Publication | ||||
Engaged = 27% more performance | Additionally, engaged employees are 27 percent more likely to report excellent performance | Witters, Dan, and Sangeeta Agrawal. “Well-Being Enhances Benefits of Employee Engagement.” Gallup. October 27, 2015. Accessed February 19, 2022. | Report | ||||
Leading without authority | As Kathy Caprino puts it in her Forbes article, co-elevation “is a key foundational behavior that we can all use to lead, connect, and elevate ourselves and others powerfully and effectively, even without pre-established authority.” Leadership is a daily process; it’s about improving people, teams, and operations. In Keith’s class, he talks about the twelve skills of a leader in the twenty-first century. The most critical skill? Be focused on co-creation and collaboration; serve people, and focus on a collective approach. Isn’t it obvious? Giving is an enabler to build networks. It will unleash this superpower! | Caprino, Kathy. “Co-Elevation: How to Achieve Positive Leadership Impact Without Pre-Established Authority.” Forbes, May 22, 2020. | Website | ||||
Keit's co-elevation definition | Keith coined the term “co-elevation,” defined as “an approach to collaboratively achieve new levels of success through a team’s commitment to co-create and challenge each other to go higher” (Co-Elevation, 2021) | Co-Elevation. Co-Elevation. Accessed January 27, 2022. | Website | ||||
“In the startup world, Give First means simply trying to help anyone—especially entrepreneurs—with no expectation of getting anything back | Brad is the person who promoted the #GiveFirst principle. He wrote, mandated, and even made it part of the code of conduct of Techstars. This is how he defines it, along with Techstars co-founder David Cohen: “In the startup world, Give First means simply trying to help anyone—especially entrepreneurs—with no expectation of getting anything back. It’s the pay-it-forward principle that builds strong startup networks” (Cohen and Feld, 2022). In the code of conduct of Techstars (Techstars, 2021), you can find seven principles for the #GiveFirst mindset: 1. We help others whenever possible. We are all busy, but when the ask is sincere and realistic, we respond and help. We respect each other’s time and are clear and focused on our requests. 2. We respond quickly in network. We make every attempt to prioritize and respond to requests from fellow Techstars network members, ideally within two business days. 3. We deliberately create a virtuous cycle. We proactively work to give back to the ecosystem by giving first to others in our community with no specific expectations of return. 4. We appreciate the help of others. No one goes it alone; startups are a team activity. We express our appreciation for the help of our customers, mentors, and others that make our success possible. 5. We respect “no” as an answer. If another member says no to a request, we respect their decision. 6. We share talent and business opportunities. Whenever we have finalist candidates whom we choose not to hire directly, we share them with others in the network. When we become aware of good business opportunities that we choose not to pursue directly, we share them with others in the network. 7. We are committed to building a safe, sustainable, long-lasting, and prosperous global society through our business activities. We believe in solving environmental issues, such as climate change, to contribute to building a people- and planet-friendly future. | Cohen, David, and Brad Feld. “Give First with David Cohen and Brad Feld.” Techstars. Accessed February 20, 2022. | Website | ||||
Give first - live example | Well, it’s been months since we last had a chat. Just wanted you to know that before I messaged you last year on career advice as a young chemistry graduate, I had earlier messaged tons of people. You were the only one who replied. That gave me hope. And made me feel part of a global community. A feeling you don’t usually get from being a Nigerian. Wishing you better days ahead.” When I helped him and said yes to having a chat, I was a student with no money and no significant business relationships to offer him. However, I took the time to reply. This shows that giving is a value, it is a state of being we do for a lifetime and receiving messages like the one above is the reward. | Edet, Nsikak (@nsikak edet). “Well, it’s be months since we last had a chat. Just wanted you to know that before I messaged you last year on career advice as a young chemistry graduate.” Comment on @Mikelmangold. LinkedIn, 2021. | Website | ||||
Feld, Brad, and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. 2020. | Book | ||||||
This is my favorite principle of the book. I have seen way too many people focus on transactions in the business world instead of building relationships. What is the difference between a giver and a taker? As Adam Grants put it in his article “In the Company of Givers and Takers,” “When they act like givers, they contribute to others without seeking anything in return. They might offer assistance, share knowledge, or make valuable introductions. When they act like takers, they try to get other people to serve their ends while carefully guarding their own expertise and time.” Usually, people ask themselves unconsciously, “What is in it for me?” Or, as an acquaintance mentioned to me, “The hard part is where to focus, how to make sure my giving is creating an impact, how to deal with people who only take and never give.” This person is correct; as of today, only a quarter of the workforce are givers (Grant, 2013), making it very hard to give when most people aren’t. It is straightforward; when people only give something to others when they are sure they will get something in return, they behave selfishly. If we know we can be helpful and don’t do it because they think this person is a taker, then we don’t change the more significant systemic problem: Everyone is focused on themselves. In the multistakeholder economy we live in today, more people should go from ego to echo and move away from being focused on themselves, starting focusing on the networks that share the same intentions. We should be focusing on building relationships. | Grant, Adam. “In the Company of Givers and Takers.” Harvard Business Review, April 2013. | HBR | |||||
1.4 % of 82 trillion dollars of US-based assets are entrusted to diverse-owned firms. | In fact, only 1.4 percent of more than eighty two trillion dollars of US-based assets are entrusted to diverse-owned firms. What does this mean? It means that from the eighty-two trillion dollars being invested in mutual funds, hedge funds, private equity funds, and real estate funds, investors only entrust 1.4 percent of assets are owned by women and/or people of color. | Knight Foundation. “Asset Management Industry Severely Lacking Diversity, New Knight Foundation Study Finds; Signals Untapped Opportunity For Investors.” Last modified December 7, 2021. | Report | ||||
Silicon Valley VC share deals. Same for fournders | Like Nina, other investors worldwide have noticed the same about the art of giving and sharing in Silicon Valley. Carsten Jens Maschmeyer is a German billionaire businessman, investor, and panel member of the German investment television series Die Höhle der Löwen (“The Lions’ Den”). In November 2021, he posted on LinkedIn about his startup tour in San Francisco. He mentioned four things the place does differently from Germany: 1. The deals are faster. 2. The pitches are focused on growth and vision rather than cost reduction and slow growth. 3. Startups fight hard to get more people (their motto is, “You are whom you hire!”). In Germany, on the other hand, many people think that good people are too expensive. 4. Last but not least, networking is everything. VC funds like to share their deal flow (i.e., they give first) and see where they can invest with other investors. Founders of various startups also help each other with recruiting, customer acquisition, and contacts (Maschmeyer, 2021). | Maschmeyer, Carsten (@Carsten Marschmeyer). “Gerade bin ich auf Startup-Tour in den USA. Für mich ist die Bay Area (Silicon Valley und San Francisco) nicht nur eine Region, sondern ein Ort voll kreativer.” LinkedIn, November 2021. | Website | ||||
“The fastest way to extend your influence is to tap into people upon you,” | In the Mindvalley online course, Ultimate Leadership, Keith Ferrazzi mentions, “The fastest way to extend your influence is to tap into people upon you,” which encapsulates well what happened to me. I tried to add value as much as I could; many doors have opened by doing so. What is interesting is that Keith comes from an impoverished social class. His father was a steelworker, and his mother was a cleaning lady. His father knew his son had to go to an excellent private school, and he found a way to convince the director of a private high school to take his son and provide him with a scholarship. His father wasn’t elite, but he was bold enough to ask for help. He understood he had to tap into the people above him. Keith went on to graduate from Yale University. Keith was less than thirty years old when he became the youngest CMO (chief marketing officer) of Deloitte US. How did he do this? He succeeded in having a great relationship with a senior executive. As a passion project, he wrote and published a report on leadership, comparing the different leadership styles of other Fortune 500 companies. The executive knew about the report and was astonished by the great work, and as a result, promoted Keith, first to partner and then CMO of the company (Mindvalley, 2022). | Mindvalley. Introducing Ultimate Leadership by Keith Ferrazzi. Accessed, January 27, 2022. | Website | ||||
Helping / Sharing expertise = success networked organization | Research demonstrates that having the intention to help and to share our own expertise with others can lead to success in today’s collaborative, networked organizations. | Nickisch, Curt. “Leaders Who Get How to Give.” Harvard Business Review, January 24, 2017. | HBR | ||||
Employee giving = desirable business outcomes. Increase productivity, higher profitability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, lower costs, lower turnover rates. | It is straightforward; when people only give something to others when they are sure they will get something in return, they behave selfishly. If we know we can be helpful and don’t do it because they think this person is a taker, then we don’t change the more significant systemic problem: Everyone is focused on themselves. In the multistakeholder economy we live in today, more people should go from ego to echo and move away from being focused on themselves, starting focusing on the networks that share the same intentions. We should be focusing on building relationships. A meta-analysis from the University of Arizona, led by Nathan Podsakoff, investigated thirty-eight organizational behavior studies, representing more than 3,500 business units from different industries. They found a robust correlation between employee giving and desirable business outcomes. Giving predicts a unit’s increase in productivity, higher profitability, efficiency, and customer satisfaction, along with lower costs and turnover rates. As mentioned in the Harvard Business Review article “In the Company of Givers” by Curt Nickisch, “Generosity can be guided in the direction of greatest impact.” | Podsakoff, Nathan P., Steven W. Whiting, Philip Podsakoff, and Brian D. Blume. “Individual- and Organizational-Level Consequences of Organizational Citizenship Behaviors: A Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Applied Psychology 94, no. 1 (January 2019): 122–41. | Publication | ||||
1. help others 2. respond in network 3. create a virtuous cycle. 4. appreciate the help 5. We respect “no” 6. share talent and business opportunities. 7. building a safe, sustainable, long-lasting, and prosperous global society through our business activities. | In the code of conduct of Techstars (Techstars, 2021), you can find seven principles for the #GiveFirst mindset: 1. We help others whenever possible. We are all busy, but when the ask is sincere and realistic, we respond and help. We respect each other’s time and are clear and focused on our requests. 2. We respond quickly in network. We make every attempt to prioritize and respond to requests from fellow Techstars network members, ideally within two business days. 3. We deliberately create a virtuous cycle. We proactively work to give back to the ecosystem by giving first to others in our community with no specific expectations of return. 4. We appreciate the help of others. No one goes it alone; startups are a team activity. We express our appreciation for the help of our customers, mentors, and others that make our success possible. 5. We respect “no” as an answer. If another member says no to a request, we respect their decision. 6. We share talent and business opportunities. Whenever we have finalist candidates whom we choose not to hire directly, we share them with others in the network. When we become aware of good business opportunities that we choose not to pursue directly, we share them with others in the network. 7. We are committed to building a safe, sustainable, long-lasting, and prosperous global society through our business activities. We believe in solving environmental issues, such as climate change, to contribute to building a people- and planet-friendly future. | Techstars. Code of Conduct. Accessed December 11, 2021. | Website | ||||
85% = job through networking | Up to 85 percent of jobs are filled via networking | Turczynski, Bart. “2021 HR Statistics: Job Search, Hiring, Recruiting & Interviews.” Career Blog. Zety, April 14, 2021. | Website | ||||
2000 years matherthicians / philosopher study = creativity <> social capital | Secondly, the 1998 study “Global Theory of Intellectual Change” analyzed the network of philosophers and mathematicians in Asian and Western societies spanning two thousand years. The study showed that the secret behind an individual’s exceptional creativity was the ability of an individual to tap into their social capital (their network) to gather ideas (Collins, 2000). | Collins, Randall. The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2000. | Publication | ||||
Airlines = sixty-eight years The internet = 7 years, but Pokémon Go—nineteen days! ------ 2 -> 1 connecgions 8 users -> 28 connections. | Jeff Desjardins’ 2018 blog article “How Long Does It Take to Hit 50 Million Users?” explains it well. It could take as long as twenty years to implement some new transformative technologies, like connected electric cars, in the market; however, in most cases, today’s digital technologies can hit fifty million users very quickly. Did you know it took airlines sixty-eight years to hit fifty million users? Automobiles, fifty-two years. The internet took seven years, but Pokémon Go—nineteen days! Sure, an app can’t be compared to a plane, but it still highlights the network effects. The more people are connected to the internet, the more connections exist. When there are only two users, you have one connection. When there are eight users, you have twenty-eight connections. And as a result, the adoption of an idea can be exponential. With the rise of our digital world, the power is no longer at the top of the hierarchy but across the network. Everybody who is part of it can start to drive a change. | Desjardins, Jeff. “How Long Does It Take to Hit 50 Million Users?” Visualcapitalist. June 8, 2018. | Website | ||||
Adobe’s CEO can attest that the long-term gains outweigh the short-term challenges. He overcommunicated and was transparent with all its stakeholders: customers, sales representatives, and channel partners | An excellent example to highlight how powerful sharing can be is what Adobe did when it went through a significant digital transformation from 2011 to 2014. They went from the expensive boxed software with a CD that most of you know to a cloud service with a subscription model. Despite the difficulties of transitioning into a completely new business model, they were successful because they focused on transparency with their investment community. They knew they would lose revenue for a few years until the new cloud service was established. Because of this, many haters were against this long-term strategy and warned them about potential losses. Although they lost a lot in revenue during the start of the transformation, they increased their stock price during the entire shift. Adobe’s CEO can attest that the long-term gains outweigh the short-term challenges. He overcommunicated and was transparent with all its stakeholders: customers, sales representatives, and channel partners (Lev-Ram, 2018). This example is one of many that shows open communication is existential during a crisis and essential transformation. As Charlene Li puts it: <block-quote>“What differentiates companies that have successfully adopted disruptive transformation strategies is that they commit to building a relationship through open communication from the start, regardless of the outcome. For Adobe, that meant committing to complete transparency, internally and then externally, from day one.” (Li, 2019) | Lev-Ram, Michal, “For Adobe, Cloud Traction Leads to Record-High Stock Price.” Fortune, June 18, 2014. | Website | ||||
they commit to building a relationship through open communication from the start, regardless of the outcome | As Charlene Li puts it: What differentiates companies that have successfully adopted disruptive transformation strategies is that they commit to building a relationship through open communication from the start, regardless of the outcome. For Adobe, that meant committing to complete transparency, internally and then externally, from day one.” (Li, 2019) | Li, Charlene. “How Disruptors Build Trust and Power.” Leading Disruption (blog). LinkedIn, June 7, 2021. | Website | ||||
not buy into a coming change is that they feel uncertain and unsure of what this will mean to them. | Charlene Li is an entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author. She has seen business, society, and the world undergo seismic changes. Charlene helps leaders and organizations thrive with disruption and is an expert on digital transformation and leadership. Back when I was in San Francisco in early 2020, I attended the launch of her book, The Disruption Mindset. Here’s a key quote from that book: “The major reason people do not buy into a coming change is that they feel uncertain and unsure of what this will mean to them. If they can’t understand the change, why it’s happening, and how it might affect them, you can’t discuss it with them.” According to Charlene, the key to creating change is to be as open and transparent as possible. It builds trust. Charlene, similar to Greg, says being open comes with a shared truth and purpose. Once accomplished, it creates accountability to each other to execute it. | Li, Charlene. The Disruption Mindset: Why Some Organizations Transform While Others Fail. Oakton: IdeaPress Publishing, 2019. | Book | ||||
overcome the majority. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and provide an incorrect answer to conform to the rest of the group | One of the reasons forming a small group is so essential, Greg told me, is that it helps to overcome the majority. How so? It goes back to a phenomenon identified in the Asch Conformity Experiment (McLeod, 2018). Solomon Asch, a pioneer of social psychology, conducted a series of experiments during the 1950s. Participants were shown a set of vertical lines labeled X, A, B, and C, and they had to say which line, A, B, or C, was the same length as line X. All participants were Asch’s assistants with pre-defined tasks before the experiment, except one. That person didn’t know all the other participants were playing along and saying the wrong answer on purpose. To experiment with how group norms may affect the group members’ viewpoint, Asch’s assistants said line X was the same length as line A. Even though it was clear that line X was the same length as line B, the participant (the one who was not aware this was an experiment) agreed with the group because the majority said line X was the same length as line A. Asch found that people were willing to ignore reality and provide an incorrect answer to conform to the rest of the group. We all know it. Usually, we make decisions based on the people surrounding us and often try to fit in. The psychological behavior we learned from this study fundamentally impacts our professional and personal lives. This is why we have to get a few small groups willing to create change to influence and win over the majority. | McLeod, Saul. “Asch Conformity Experiment.” Simply Psychology. Last modified December 28, 2018. | Publication | ||||
PxG: “At the beginning, there were just three of us working on a project: one in R&D, | Greg explained that the people who succeeded in creating a change inside an organization were not the ones who said, “I did this; this is cool,” and then other people started to use it. The ones who succeeded were the ones who could excite others, and they would react with, “This is cool; I would like to do that as well.” Let’s illustrate this with the digital tech transformation initiative of a multinational consumer goods corporation, Procter and Gamble. Procter and Gamble created an initiative called PxG, which dealt with using digital technologies to solve the organization’s research and development (R&D) problems. They started with only one project. According to PxG’s head, John Gadsby, “At the beginning, there were just three of us working on a project: one in R&D, one in manufacturing, and one in IT... We knew that we could work together in a better way. Through experimentation and iteration, we reduced the time for a key process from weeks down to hours. That got our work noticed.” (Satell, 2020) We often think that starting small is meaningless, and we all want a significant impact right away. But successful change always begins with a small group loosely connected and united by a shared purpose. As Greg told me, “You have to find their reasons to participate. People adopt change for their reasons, not yours.” This is why our mission as a changemaker is to create small groups and bring like-minded people interested in the project in as soon as possible. Those aiming for change should facilitate connections among like-minded people with a sense of shared values and purpose. It is about making everyone proud to be part of the movement; it creates a sense of belonging. If this happens, people will feel empowered and will want to participate. | Satell, Greg. “You Don’t Need a Grand Strategy to Achieve Organizational Change.” Harvard Business Review, March 10, 2020. | HBR | ||||
Atypical Combinations of Scientific Impact: quantitative analysis 19 million sc papers. most highly cited papers = specialists in one area collaborating with specialists in entirely different areas. | In the first, Brian Uzzi, Richard L. Thomas Professor of Leadership at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, was the lead author of the paper “Atypical Combinations of Scientific Impact,” in the journal Science. His team did a quantitative analysis of more than nineteen million scientific papers. They found that the most highly cited papers came from specialists in one area collaborating with specialists in entirely different areas. This analysis demonstrates that those who worked with peers from different environments were the best scientists who made the most significant discoveries. | Uzzi, Brian, Satyam Mukherjee, Michael Stringer, and Ben Jones. “Atypical Combinations and Scientific Impact.” Science 342, no. 6157 (October 2013): 468-472. | Publication | ||||
“written to keep the incumbents in charge, blocking innovation” | As Peter puts it, most rules were written in a different era, like when slavery was legal or women couldn’t vote. In terms of innovation, many rules are “written to keep the incumbents in charge, blocking innovation” | Diamandis, Peter. H. “How to Change Your Mindset: Peter’s Laws Peter H. Diamandis.” Awaken. May 18, 2013. | Website | ||||
develop an inclusive network of innovators and entrepreneurs that have the support, skills, and connections to positively change their communities and countries” | Alice Bosley and Patricia Letayf are the co-founders of the startup incubator Five One Labs. They help entrepreneurs in areas affected by conflict to launch their companies by providing training, mentorship, funding, and advisory support. Their vision is to “develop an inclusive network of innovators and entrepreneurs that have the support, skills, and connections to positively change their communities and countries” (Five One Labs, 2022). | Five One Labs. Five One Labs. Accessed February 2, 2022. | Website | ||||
Lakhiani, Vishen. “Which ‘Brules’ Are Holding You Back?” Mindvalley Blog. July 11, 2018. | Website | ||||||
Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of XPRIZE foundation and founder of Singularity University, named one of the world’s fifty most outstanding leaders by Fortune | Peter H. Diamandis LLC. “Peter Diamandis.” Speaking. | Website | |||||
Startup Columbia. “Alice Bosley ’17 SIPA and Patricia Letayf ‘17 SIPA Entrepreneurs of the Year, Five One Labs, Co-Founders, Executive Director and Director of Operations.” Accessed February 22, 2021. | Website | ||||||
“If you can’t win, change the rules,” and “If you can’t change the rules, ignore them” | created a long list of rules to live by, calling them Peter’s Laws. Two of them stand out to me: “If you can’t win, change the rules,” and “If you can’t change the rules, ignore them” | SUCCESS Academy. “28 Uncommon Rules to Live By, From a Space Tech Billionaire” SUCCESS Magazine, May 24, 2016. | Website | ||||
“Don’t Let the Rich, Famous Bozos Drag You Down.” IBM Home Computer Telephone | Guy Kawasaki, Silicon Valley-based author, speaker, entrepreneur, and tech evangelist, talks about how people will be against you most of the time. As he says in his 2014 TEDx Talk, “Don’t Let the Rich, Famous Bozos Drag You Down.” He defines the bozos as good people who seem to know everything. However, as he highlights, being successful doesn’t mean that they are good at predicting the future: • In 1943, the chairman of IBM, Thomas Watson, said, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” A few years later, the world was full of computers. • A Western Union internal memo from 1876 stated, “This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” A few decades later, almost everyone had a phone. • In 1977, Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, said, “There is no reason why anyone would want a computer in their home.” Fast forward a few decades, and almost everyone in the western world has a computer at home. If you want to change the world, you will swim against the current, and it won’t be easy. One of the core qualities any change-maker will need to have is resilience. You will fall on the ground many times. One of the methods to build strength is your ability to think, With whom can I collaborate? to achieve what everybody tells you can’t be done. | TEDx Talks. “The art of innovation | Guy Kawasaki | TEDxBerkeley.” February 23, 2014. Video, 21:15. | Video | ||||
“Some people see the thing that they want, and some people see the thing that prevents them from getting the thing that they want.” —Simon Sinek I once watched a video of Simon Sinek, multiple best-selling author and popular public speaker, that truly inspired me. He tells the story of when he and a friend ran in Central Park. At the end of the race, a sponsor gave out free bagels, and a long line of runners waited for their free bagels. Looking at his friend, Simon said, “Let’s get a bagel,” to which his friend replied, “Nah, the line’s too long.” Simon responded incredulously, “Free bagel?” “I don’t want to wait in line.” “Free bagel!” “Nah, too long...” He realized you can see the world in two ways: 1. You can only see the bagel, i.e., the result—the success, the impact you can create, or 2. You can only see the line—the obstacle. In the end, he went straight to the box of bagels and got one without waiting in line. Nobody got mad at him because nobody waited longer to get theirs; he did it without disturbing anyone. As Simon said in the video: “You don’t have to wait in line. You don’t have to do it the way everyone else has done it. You can do it your way. Break the rules. But you can’t get in the way of somebody getting what they want” (Winspire, 2017). This story illustrates what many of us are facing every day. We often have an idea, and then we see the path to market, the regulations, the competition, and how hard it will be to raise the money to pay people so they can work with us. This is the long line, the obstacles. Most of us get discouraged by it—including me, for some of the projects I started in the past. However, there is always a way. Sometimes, we can take shortcuts, such as going to other markets or building partnerships to overcome the competition. Some rules can be broken without hurting anyone. | Winspire Magazine. “The Story of Free Bagels by Simon Sinek - Winspire Magazine.” April 6, 2017. Video, 2:20. | Video | |||||
ChemicalWorldTour. “Le labo du futur - BAYER” February 24, 2017. Video, 7:34. | Video | ||||||
In the post’s description, Michael linked to the BioRescue Project, a non-profit organization | In June 2021, Mike Holston, an Instagrammer with more than six million followers, posted a tragic photo of the last white rhino on the planet, dead on the ground. The caption read, “The northern white rhino which survived fifty-five million years...was a testament to numerous historical changes on the planet [but] could not survive humans. The post got over ten million views, with over one million likes. In the post’s description, Michael linked to the BioRescue Project, a non-profit organization whose mission is to save the Northern White Rhinos from extinction. | Holston, Mike (@therealtarzann). “This is who we fight for...they are losing the war against us...we must fight for them by any means necessary! Whatever it takes.” Instagram, June 4th, 2021. | Website | ||||
Ighirri, Alexia. “Alsace: Quand Un Étudiant Se Donne Pour Mission de Vulgariser la Chimie.” 20 Minutes, March 23, 2017. | Website | ||||||
Video of Nestle and Coca-Cola | Vishen Lakhiani, founder and CEO of Mindvalley, also uses his vast social media presence to create change in the world. A video denouncing the sugar content of Coca-Cola received over thirty million views (Lakhiani, 2020). Another video about the amount of sugar in Nestlé’s products for kids in Malaysia received over 1.2 million views in 2018 and more than eight million views in 2020 (Lakhiani, 2020b). It pushed Nestlé to issue press releases explaining the content of its products to the public. Both Holston and Lakhiani use social media to make our world a better place to live in. But here’s the thing: You don’t need to be an influencer to use it effectively. Anyone can. | Lakhiani, Vishen (a) (@Mindvalley) “Is this the greatest marketing mislead since big tobacco? It’s up to us all to stand for our health and say NO to companies peddling dangerous products.” Facebook, Video, February 24, 2020. | Website | ||||
Lakhiani, Vishen (b) (@Vishen) “I wanted to show you first hand some of the marketing traps and misleading labelling of ‘healthy’ products you consume every single day.” Facebook, Video, January 25, 2020. | Website | ||||||
Social Media - (1) accelerate the revenue of a company 3% emplooyee; generate > 30% of content engagement. | germany | Miller, Jason. “The Amazing Multiple Benefits When an Employee Shares Content”. Marketing Blog. LinkedIn. January 31, 2017. | Website | ||||
3.5 billion people are online | Figure 9.1: Number of people using social media platforms, 2005–2019 (Our World in Data). Today, of a global population of 7.7 billion people, a minimum of 3.5 billion people are online. According to Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, a senior researcher and head of operations at Our World in Data, “Social media has changed the world. The rapid and vast adoption of these technologies is changing how we find partners, how we access information from the news, and how we organize to demand political change.” Two-thirds of all internet users use social media, and as we can see in Figure 9.1, nearly a third of the world connects to at least one platform: Facebook. I get 90 percent of my news through social media and connect daily with new people. Every day I see viral posts going around that call out for a change. | Ortiz-Ospina, Esteban. “The Rise of Social Media.” Our World in Data. Last Modified, September 18, 2019. Accessed February 10, 2022. | Website | ||||
Boldness help create change | A 2019 article by Rafael Badziag tells of when Naveen and his team met with Bill Gates. “I was in my first few months at Microsoft, and we were in a meeting about Windows NT; I was just a mid-level manager—the dumb young guy.” In the middle of the presentation, Gates turned to Naveen and asked him what he thought of the operating system. “Bill, I think it’s going to be big, fat, and slow.” Everybody stayed silent. Naveen continues, “All the top guys were in that meeting. And Bill Gates was an extremely intense person. He quietly looked at me for ten seconds and then said, ‘Exactly!’” Afterward, Naveen’s manager took him aside and said, “Do you know you work for me? And what you did is absolutely going to cost you.” Naveen replied, “Martin, it may come as a surprise to you, but I do not work for you. I work for the company, and I work for myself. So don’t you ever tell me I work for you.” Naveen’s manager put him on probation, saying, “That will show you whom you work for.” As it turns out, this act of boldness helped the company. “They changed everything in that operating system to become a lean, mean operating system. All because I was able to say, ‘Bill, this is exactly what’s going to happen if you go down this path.’” The most important lesson Naveen points out from such experience is this one: “So the cost was that I almost got fired. But that’s how entrepreneurs are. They don’t care. They’re going to say what they believe, and then they’re going to go out and do it themselves” (Badziag, 2019). | Badziag, Rafael. “Billionaire Who Made His First $1 Million at Microsoft: ‘Bill Gates Was an Extremely Intense Person.’” CNBC, November 13, 2019. | Website | ||||
60-80% percent experienced being uncomfortable and even exhausted when thinking differently | As Harvard Medical School’s researchers found, 60 to 80 percent experienced being uncomfortable and even exhausted when thinking differently | Carson, Shelley. Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life. Hoboken: Jossey-Bass Professional Learning, 2010. | Book | ||||
Great innovator spend almost 50 percent more time thinking differently than non-innovators. | Was Steve Jobs and Apple right? Do we need more rebels and bold thinkers to change the world? Yes. As Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen point out in their Harvard Business Review article “Learn How to Think Different(ly),” great innovators (launching new businesses, products, and processes) excel at connecting the unconnected using associational thinking. They spend almost 50 percent more time thinking differently than non-innovators. Is this art of thinking a talent, or can you train yourself to think differently? A study of over 5,000 entrepreneurs and executives found that almost anyone who consistently makes an effort to think differently can think differently (Dyer and Gregersen, 2011). You can train yourself to live with this philosophy. | Dyer, Jeff and Hal Gregersen. “Learn How to Think Different(ly).” Harvard Business Review, September 27, 2011. | HBR | ||||
Immigrant = work ethic | I found the story insightful because it is true that your parents have a tremendous influence on you. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell highlights the success stories of immigrants, where the children ended up very successful because of the parents’ work ethic. Similarly, my mom also started as a housekeeper. She had grown up in a low-income family forced to immigrate from Poland to Germany during World War II. Her family lost everything because the Germans stole all her family’s farms and land in the country. Today, even in her late fifties, she is the most motivated and positive person I know. Her energy was transferred to me as well. | Gladwell, Malcolm. Outliers: The Story of Success. Back Bay Books: New York, 2011. | Book | ||||
Quote think different campaign | When Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, and his team launched the legendary marketing campaign “Think Different” in 1997, they wanted to remind everyone of their brand’s core value: passionate people willing to change the world. It also showed they deeply cared about their employees who dared to be different. “The crazy ones” were the company’s heroes. The text of the campaign says it all: “Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do” (Harry Piotr, 2013). | Piotr, Harry. “Apple - Think Different - Full Version.” September 30, 2013. Video, 1:09. | Video | ||||
2019; non controlled JVs -> > 20% earning for big firms > 10% for others | Overall, Joint Ventures (JVs) and partnerships are crucial to Innovation. In 2019, Airbus, Celanese, Engie, Vodafone, and Volkswagen relied on non-controlled JVs for more than 20 percent of their earnings, while at Coca-Cola, GM, and many others, that figure was above 10 percent (Bamford, Baynham, and Ernst, 2020). | Bamford, James, Gerard Baynham, and David Ernst. “Joint Ventures and Partnerships in a Downturn.” Harvard Business Review, September-October 2020. | HBR | ||||
Mission Driven Companies = 30 % up innovation and 40% higher levels of employee retention. | According to the Deloitte Review article “Becoming Irresistible: A New Model for Employee Engagement,” mission-driven companies have 30 percent higher levels of innovation and 40 percent higher levels of employee retention. | “Becoming Irresistible: A New Model for Employee Engagement.” Deloitte Review, January 27, 2015. | Website | ||||
Only 5% have a plan to start a company in DE. (1) Lack of an entrepreneurial mindset; (2) struggle funding process. | In Germany, for instance, too few people decide to start companies. Only 5 percent of the population have plans to start a company. Experts give two reasons for this. The first is a lack of an entrepreneurial mindset. Second is the obstacles in the funding process, such as the fear of financial insecurity or the absence of entrepreneurial knowledge. | Berger-de Leon, Markus, Karel Dörner, Max Flötotto, and Tobias Henz. Entrepreneurship Zeitgeist 2030. New York: McKinsey & Company, 2021 | McKinsey | ||||
Fear of World War 3 | A few days before this book was sent to my publisher for copy editing, a war started in Ukraine, which some called the potential beginning of World War III (Boyd, 2022) | Boyd, Milo. “World War 3 Fears Grow as Russian-Ukraine Crisis Could Escalate Global Conflict.” Daily Record, February 24, 2022. | Website | ||||
COVID: trillions of $ landed in the hands of rich people. 120 million people+ fell under the extreme poverty line. | We saw a financial system that benefits the wealthiest as trillions of dollars landed in the most prosperous hands while an additional 120 million people fell under the extreme poverty line | Ferreira, Francisco H. G. “Inequality in the Time of COVID-19.” International Monetary Fund Finance & Development, June 2021, | Report | ||||
Humans cause 75 percent of wildfires | The 2020 report, “Fires, Forests, and the Future: A Crisis Raging Out of Control?” by the World Wildlife Fund and Boston Consulting Group, shows that our planet is nearing its limit. Humans cause 75 percent of wildfires, and the number of fire alerts around the world in 2020 was up 13 percent compared to 2019—which was already a record year | Fires, Forests and the Future: A Crisis Raging Out of Control? Gland, Switzerland: World Wildlife Fund, 2020. | Report | ||||
Problem = oppportunity | “In the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity” | Goodreads. Quote by Albert Einstein: “In the midst of every crisis, lies great opport....” Accessed February 15, 2022. | Website | ||||
60 to 70 percent do not work / no business arrangement but relationship | However, often those corporate alliances fail—60 to 70 percent do not work. This is mainly because companies and people do not emphasize the right things. They suggest focusing less on the right business arrangement and more on developing the right working relationships. Also, they insist business leaders should not be concentrating on formal governance systems and structures but rather on enabling collaborative behavior | Hughes, Jonathan, and Jeff Weiss. “Simple Rules for Making Alliances Work.” Harvard Business Review, November 2007. | HBR | ||||
8 year study: Purpose = unified organizations, more-motivated stakeholders,more profitable growth | An eight-year study of high-growth companies looked for traditional drivers behind success, such as innovation. It found that purpose created more unified organizations, more-motivated stakeholders, and more profitable growth | Malnight, Thomas W., Ivy Buche, and Charles Dhanaraj. “Put Purpose at the Core of Your Strategy.” Harvard Business Review, September–October 2019. | HBR | ||||
Employee of the past vs employee of the future | Employees in the Past • Work nine to five • Work in a corporate office • Use company equipment • Focused on inputs • Climb the corporate ladder • Pre-defined work • Hoards information • No voice • Relies on email • Focused on knowledge • Corporate learning and teaching Employees in the Future • Work anytime • Work anywhere • Use any device • Focused on outputs • Create your own ladder • Customized work • Shares information • Can become a leader • Relies on collaboration technologies • Focus on adaptive learning • Democratized learning and teaching | Morgan, Jacob. “The Evolution of the Employee.” Jacob Morgan Inc. September 16, 2014. | Website | ||||
“The reality of today’s world is that connection wins and isolation loses.” ; Silicon Valley ; immigrant to thrive | As Greg Satell, an expert in global transformation and change, whom I mentioned in Chapter 7, puts it, “The reality of today’s world is that connection wins and isolation loses.” Greg highlights this culture of openness and meritocracy has made Silicon Valley an ideal place for the immigrant to thrive. Everyone is included. As AnnaLee Saxenian said in an interview with Greg, “Everybody worked for the same company—Silicon Valley. | Book | |||||
1. Condition for stakeholder capitalism; 2. Investment for SDGs; 3. Innovation | The World Economic Forum called its fiftieth annual conference “The Great Reset.” Public and private leaders came together in 2020 to discuss how to rebuild our society and economy. Three focuses were identified (Schwab, 2020): 1. Creating the condition for a “stakeholder economy,” which is about new policies, tax reforms, trade arrangements, and more to boost public-private partnerships and increase collaboration across businesses. 2. Investments to advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability. 3. Harnessing the innovations of the fourth industrial revolution, social and health challenges being the priorities. In this new model, collaboration is enhanced, not just for unlocking innovations but also for supporting the well-being and safety of workers, customers, and local communities. These three pillars for the reset will unlock millions of dollars worldwide and boost what I call the startup and multistakeholder economy, driven by entrepreneurial minds. A great example of this new model is the collaboration we’ve seen during the COVID-19 crisis to launch a new vaccine in a record time. “Companies, universities, and others have joined forces to develop diagnostics, therapeutics, and possible vaccines; establish testing centers; create mechanisms for tracing infections; and deliver telemedicine. Imagine what could be possible if similar concerted efforts were made in every sector” | Schwab, Klaus. “Now Is the Time for a ‘Great Reset.’” World Economic Forum. Last modified June 3, 2020. | Website | ||||
“One hundred percent of employees are people. One hundred percent of customers are people. One hundred percent of investors are people. If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.” | You’ve probably seen Simon Sinek’s 2009 TEDx Talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” wherein he discusses the core topics of his book The Power of Why. His talk, books, and messages are still impacting millions of lives worldwide—for a good reason. More and more of us want to be understood, and a company saying, “We will make a ton of profit,” won’t attract the best talent anymore. As Simon so insightfully points out, “One hundred percent of employees are people. One hundred percent of customers are people. One hundred percent of investors are people. If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.” | Sinek, Simon (@Simon Sinek). “100 percent of employees are people. 100 percent of customers are people. 100 percent of investors are people. If you don’t understand people, you don’t understand business.” LinkedIn, February 15, 2022. | Website | ||||
> 70 percent of Millennials expect their employers to focus on societal or mission-driven problems. | It starts with the new generation. Young people want to join purposeful companies. The Deloitte Millennial Survey from 2014 highlighted that more than 70 percent of Millennials expect their employers to focus on societal or mission-driven problems. When a company focuses on these, it’s a purpose-driven company millennials want to work for. | The Deloitte Millennial Survey – Executive Summary. London: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, 2014. | Report | ||||
Stakeholder capitalism: The focus is on gains in this economy and works with a new dashboard encompassing people, the planet, prosperity, and institutions | They highlighted the need to reduce our shareholder capitalism, which reinforces the priority of making profits for shareholders alone, and that instead, we will move toward stakeholder capitalism. The focus is on gains in this economy and works with a new dashboard encompassing people, the planet, prosperity, and institutions | World Economic Forum. “What Is the Great Reset? | Davos Agenda 2021.” January 25, 2021. Video, 4:31. | Video |