Author Archives: Anthéa

This week end, I saw the movie “Zootopia” (don’t make fun of me 😉 ). It is the story of a rabbit, Judy, who comes from countryside. Her parents are farmer. In their world, people are divided in two main groups : preys and predators. Long time ago predators were used to killed preys but now they leave almost in harmony. The dream of Judy is to become a policewoman. However, in her world, preys never became policeman, policeman is reserved to predators who are strong.  Finally Judy succeed in entering in the police school, she was the first prey to enter in this school. At the beginning, Judy was not able to do all the exercise because she was not enough strong. But Judy didn’t loose courage and work twice more than others and she succeed in becoming the first prey policeman and even the major of her promotion. At this point Judy thought that she succeed in realizing her dream. Unfortunately it was not completely true. Indeed, she was allocated in the biggest city called Zootopia but, when she arrived, her director didn’t handle her as others because she was a prey and not a predator.  Hence, she was not allocated at an affair as the others but at the parking. Therefore, she decided that she will do this mission better than expected to prove her director that she is competent. Unfortunately it was not enough for his director who keep on treating her in a bad way. However, with strength, courage and a lot of nerve, Judy finally succeed in finding the solution to the biggest affair of disappearance of the city. Even if sometimes she was totally discouraged she finally succeed in becoming a real and respected policewoman.

The first lesson of this movie is that, the social environment where we come from doesn’t have any importance. It is not because your parents are not engineer or doctor or whatever else that you can not become one if you want. The most important point is to believe in yourself and don’t let others discourage you by saying that it’s not possible for you because of your social environment.

The second lesson was that it is not because people think you are not able to do something because you are too fragile or not enough competent for instance, that you can’t do it. If you are sure that you want to do it, you can do it. You have to believe in yourself and work harder to show that  you are able to do it. So don’t let others discourage you.

I also learnt that a victory is not enough, unfortunately you still have to prove others that you are competent even if you have already prove them you are competent (ex: to be graduated) , it’s a continuous process. You always have to fight to succeed in realizing your dream. I think it’s important for an entrepreneur to understand this because it is not because your venture is a success at the beginning that it’s all done, you have to take care of it and always work to keep it alive.

The last lesson learnt was that sometimes you need to use a lot of nerve to show that you can do it whatever others said. I think that is a good point for an entrepreneur. Indeed an entrepreneur has to show that he has enough ambition and is ready to do lots of things to succeed in doing it. An entrepreneur has also to be ready to take some risk to succeed because victory need risk.

I hope this post will  have tempted you to see Zootopia and you will find it interesting.

 

 

During the first period of this semester, I had a course of Design thinking given by Julien Mauroy, at Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. I would like to share this experience with you because I think it can be really interesting for technology entrepreneurship.

Indeed, this method allows to create a product/service by ensuring that it fulfills needs of the customer and are perfectly adapted to them.

Design thinking is a process to innovate with a close relation with the customer. This process is composed of five steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. The power of Design thinking is in the iteration of this process.

I will first explain you each phase of the process and then show why it’s interesting for technology entrepreneurship.

To apply Design thinking you have to work in interdisciplinary team in order to break the walls of the company’s services.

The five steps of the process:

• EMPATHIZE: You have to observe and interview future customers in order to understand and even discover their needs. I said discover because sometimes customers themselves even don’t know what they need. You have to find their needs without the traditional survey, in order “to put people first” (Brown, 2009).

• DEFINE: Then you have to gather all information you have learnt to define clearly the problem. To share information, it’s useful to use storytelling because it helps to feel the customers’ feelings.

• IDEATE: After defining the problem, you have to find lots of idea which could solve this problem. Brainstorming is the key tool to do this. During brainstorming you put all ideas of all members of the team on post-in and you display them on a wall. It allows to build on the idea of others. To be successful, brainstorming needs rules as Tim Brown describes in his book: “the rules are literally written on the walls: Defer judgment. Encourage wild ideas. Stay focused on the topic. The most important of them, I would argue, is “Build on the ideas of others””. Brainstorming will be more efficient than just creating alone because it will provide a wider variety of ideas. At the end of the brainstorming you have then to select one idea.

• PROTOTYPE: You have to prototype your idea. However, the prototype doesn’t have to be the perfect representation of what the product will be at the end. The goal of the prototype is to allow customers to experience your idea in order to provide relevant feedback.

• TEST: You have to test your prototype with real customers and not with employees of the companies. This point is really important to have relevant feedback. During this phase you have to be opened to hear criticisms because, even if it’s difficult, this will help you to improve your product. As Gordon Murray said “You have the idea, but you have to do it, and that’s what cuts the bullshit out.”.

After the test, you have to do the process again in order to improve your product using the feedback of your customers.

Now you know what Design thinking is, I will try to show you that it can be a useful tool for technology entrepreneurship.

First, sometimes with technology, we have a really good invention but it can be difficult to find a good way to exploit it in a product or a service. It is even more difficult to use this invention to create something that customers really needs. Design thinking can help to solve this problem by allowing to co-create with customers. At the end, you have a product and you are sure that it fulfills the customers’ needs and that it’s not just something you think is good for them.

Moreover, Design thinking allows you to prototype earlier your idea and not just at the end of the project when all details are defined. It avoids to spend too much time and money on an idea which are not adapted to your customers.

Design thinking allows to decrease the risk for your company because you are sure that you have a market for your product and this market agrees your choice of conception.

I hope this post will help you, however, it is just a summary of the method, therefore, if you want to learn more about Design thinking, I advise you to read these two books which are really interesting and show relevant examples:

• BROWN Tim. Change by design. Harper Collins, 2009.

• CROSS Nigel. Design thinking, Understanding how designers think and work. Berg, 2011.

You should also watch this TED video: ROY Elise (2015, September). When we design for disability, we all benefit.

Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/elise_roy_when_we_design_for_disability_we_all_benefit?language=en

 

 

 

Last Saturday, I went to the Startup day which has been presented in class. The event was organised by the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship. Rasmus Rahm, the executive director of SSES, explained that the goal of this day is to educate with the oldest way of knowledge transfer: stories.  That is why, during all the day, we will be able to participate at different conferences where entrepreneurs will tell us their stories.  I will summarize the 5 stories I heard.

The first story was the story of Sydney Lai, the head of business of Audacy, a space communications service provider. She works in two subjects: space and virtual reality. She explained that both lead us to explore a new universe, that’s why it’s really interesting for her.

She gave us the keys to succeed in building a “space start-up”:

• Theory of constraints: You have to identify the series of tasks and their link. Then to move to one task to another you have to complete the previous one. It allows you to be sure to not forget important tasks.
• Milestones: you have to be transparent with your investors or future customers. Therefore, you should give us the access of what you have already done and what you plan to do after.
• Team: instead of having a structured hierarchy where the CEO is at the top, all members of the team should be equal.

Then, she explained challenges in virtual reality.  There are 3 main challenges:

• Find the investment
• User adoption
• Retention: pain killer Vs Vitamin trad

The conclusion of her story was: “Build things that allow people to explore.”

 

The second story was the story of Sofia Appelgren, founder of Mitt Liv. Mitt Liv means “My life” and was created in 2008. Mitt Liv is a company which wants to open doors for people with a foreign background by providing them training, mentoring and recruitment.

For her, the most important for a startup is to run a business with strong values, clear ideas and lots of ambition.  Then she speaks about judgement. She is fed up because we judge people for where they come from and not on what they are, that’s why she had the idea of Mitt Liv. For her, we need to know who we are and we need a new way to judge people. She explained that human is programmed to prefer people who share the same value, hobbies, it’s our unconscious.  Most of our decision are taking emotionally.  99,99% of our daily decisions are unconscious, and 11 decisions are made in 1 sec when we meet a new person. Moreover, she explained that we all have prejudices. Therefore, we need to become more open-minded.

Then, how to use all the diversity in a peace environment? What future skills leaders will have to use this diversity? First, they have to be aware of the world around them. Second, they have to be aware of their own prejudices to avoid them.

To conclude, she used a quote from Steve Jobs which explains that when you will understand that people not smarter than you will succeed in doing interesting things or business, then the world around you will change.

 

The third story was the story of Elina Berglund Scherwitzl, the co-founder of Natural cycles. Natural cycles is an app which provide a contraception without medicine. Indeed, it uses your temperature to show you if there is a risk of pregnancy or not, so you can know it every day. She had this idea because after her wedding, she wanted a natural contraception before having a baby, so they started to work on it with her husband.

She explained that during the development of their app, they had problems with the regulation, but they continue to work on it. Finally they have been certified the only contraceptive app.

The conclusion of this story was: “If you fail, be tenacious it’s the most important thing.”

 

The 4th story was the story of Nikolaj Koster, who works in Spiri Drive. The goal of this start-up is to build a powerful mobility solution. For them, the future for the mobility is described as:

• A service
• Shared
• Electric
• Self driving

Problems they want to solve are:

• Emissions of transport
• Utilization, nowadays most of car used are not fully used (lots of seat are unused)
• Parking
• Congestion
• Accidents

Solutions they provide: share an electric self driving car. They want to gather people who are going in the same direction.

 

The last story was the story of Niklas Laning, the founder of Daily bits of. He has created lots of start-ups and learnt a lot about them. Therefore he gave us the 3 main dysfunctions that a start-up should avoid:

• Making it about ego, because it leads to a bad communication and a lack of trust, so the start-up will not survive. It also attracts wrong people who just want to become the leader instead of people who really want to work for the start-up.
• No talk no walk when it comes to diversity. Diversity is difficult  to manage so it’s easy to avoid it? However, you should exploit it because it can lead to increase productivity and creativity.
• Making it about long hours. You should avoid to spend all your time for your start-up, it’s important to do something else too.

 

Link of the event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1635420090096271/

 

 

Yesterday, I went to the Stockholm Tech Meetup with IBM Ventures and Schibsted. The Stockholm Tech meet up is the Europe’s largest event for start ups and it takes place every first Monday of each month. The main guests this Monday were IBM Ventures and Schibsted.

 

IBM Ventures helps start-ups to grow up, to become more visible on the market and to find investors to start their business.

Schibsted is a Norwegian conglomerate in the media domain. For instance, they own 20minutes, Aftenposten or Blocket. They have more than 200 million users in the 5 continents.

First, they spoke about investment in Sweden. Indeed, Sweden continues to increase its share of investment into the Nordic due to multiple hubs maturing and in particular in Stockholm. In 2016, 1,4 billions $ were invested into Stockholm.  They explained that 25% exits of Nordic come from Stockholm. Moreover, acquires of Stockholm tech companies include Facebook, Microsoft or Cisco. Therefore, big companies pay attention to what happen in Stockholm. That’s why, Nordic and in particular Stockholm are strong markets.

Then different interviews of Sweden companies have been done to illustrate the increasing investment in Sweden. The companies interviewed were Swedbank, Dynamo and Drive Now.

Swedbank is a bank which helps lots of start-ups for the financing of their business. They receive 8 applications a day. Moreover, they explained the importance of partnering while they help a start-up. For them, the main goal is to give a better control to start-ups.  They also want to optimize the subscription of start-ups.

Then, Dynamo was interviewed. Dynamo is a company of 50 developers. On the one hand, they are doing consulting, for instance, they helped a company to create a service to reduce waste of production. On the other hand, they work on projects which come from the company. During the interview, they spoke about their method to innovate fastly: the Design Sprint. This method is interesting because it’s better to create a slice of something than spending 5 months on something not viable. To do the Design sprint method you need: a facilitator/ conductor, a recorder/note taker, a product owner and the stakeholders, a white board and supplies, and market and competition research. The method is composed of 5 steps:

• Understand: Elevator Pitch. You have to find the right problem and it has to be clear.
• Diverge: Generate ideas individually or in team. Here the most important rule is “No judging allowed”.
• Converge: here is the judging time to chose the best solution. For that, you can use a vote map.
• Prototype: Make your idea real.
• Test: Test your prototype with potential users from the market target. It’s important to not do this test with just colleagues but with real future customers.  After the test, you have to interview the testers. During the interview, you have to avoid questions of which the answer can start with “it depends”. Moreover you have to avoid using “how often” but you have to ask “when was the last time?” to collect more relevant information.

 

 

Finally, they interviewed Drive Now. A company of car sharing. This company offers an app where you can find their cars available near from you. Then, you can just use the car and let it wherever and whenever you want. You will just pay for the kilometers you have done with the car. It creates flexibility in the car sharing because you don’t need to reach a precise point to let the car. Drive now is present in various cities as London, Bruxelles or Stockholm. They explained that the helps from the cities depends on politics. For example, Stockholm is positively opened for Drive now, however, they not support the company.  Currently in Stockholm, they have 300 cars available with 10% of electric cars. They explained that for the future, they would like to increase the number of electrical cars to become more environmental friendly.

After these interviews, there was a discussion between an investor of IBM Ventures (Christoph Auer Welsbach),  a founder and two investment managers. They explained that banks as Swedbank are really important for innovation because without them we can’t innovate. Moreover, he shows that IBM is interesting because  decreasing the risk is never increasing innovation, that is why IBM’ help is really important for start-ups. Moreover IBM is interesting because find the idea is the easiest part but build a successful company is the hardest part. He also explained that when he has to chose a company to invest, the most relevant thing he wants is a team which think for the future, because the most important thing is to create a long partnership to build something that will last for a long time.

To participate to this event was really interesting because we have learnt a lot of things about investment for start-ups and innovation in general. It was also interesting to heard different actors like investors or entrepreneurs.

 

PS: I went to this event with Marilena so we both wrote about this event, but I did it without reading what she wrote before so I hope both will be interesting for you.