Monthly Archives: April 2016

Please give your opinion and discuss in the comment section!

Spotify came out with an open letter bringing up problems with wanting to be located in Sweden, but Sweden nog being compatible for Spotify or other companies (main focus on startups) to grow. Two articles about the open letter, and the open letter from Spotify are linked down below.

Spotify’s structure

Looking at the structure of Spotify, it is clear that Spotify has already begun to move out of Sweden from the beginning. Spotify Technology SA is a holding company incorporated in 2006, based in Luxembourg and is the parent company. Spotify AB is based in Sweden with around 650 employees and handles research and development. Spotify Ltd. is based in England, and operates as the parent company. In total there are 26 offices around the world, and around 1500 employees in total.

What do you think is a better option for Spotify AB (research and development); do be located in Europe, US or Asia?
What do you think about Spotifys claims?
Have you personally experienced problems with housing situations?
The education system – to all the exchange students; did your curriculum involve programming from a young age?

http://swedishstartupspace.com/2016/04/12/spotify-founders-threaten-to-move-from-sweden-in-open-letter/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/spotify-founders-blast-swedens-business-environment-in-open-letter-1460479684?shareToken=std597e9a3e46846da9443b2f6a8d26791%3Fmod%3De2fb

The open letter (in Swedish): https://medium.com/@SpotifySE/vi-m%C3%A5ste-agera-eller-bli-omsprungna-383bb0b808eb#.bwjxv2u78

[Side note: Spotify is owned about one-sixth by the four big record labels; Universal Music Group, EMI Music, Warner Music Group, and Sony BMG.]

I attended a lunch seminar held by Stockholm Business Region that presented the Economic Graph based on information from LinkedIn. The main speaker of the event was Sue Duke, Director of Public Policy for Europe LinkedIn, with a panel consisting of Karin Wanngård (Mayor of Stockholm), Lisa Gunnarsson (Head of LinkedIn Nordics), Joseph Michael (Project Manager, Startup/Tech, City of Stockholm), Philip Ahlsén (Talent Acquisition Manager, Klarna) and Martin Ganeteg (HRIS Manager, SCA).

Karin Wanngård started the seminar by telling us the vision of Stockholm being a sustainable city, financially, democratically and environmentally, and being a hub for new recruitment and talent. Wanngård is also one of the people behind the project Dataslöjd, putting programming on the curriculum.

After that Sue Duke presented the Economic Graph, showing us why Silicon Valley is calling Stockholm Silicon Forrest and Tech-city of Europe.

Lastly there was a panel taking up some interesting thing. Big turnover is usually seen as a bad thing, but instead it should be seen as growing and getting new networks, fresh ideas and talents. Klarna has a mindset that the organization are getting the talents, rather than talents finding them.

For some reason my pictures don’t want to post in a good quality so I’ll tell you about some of the results and bring the report to our next class.

Top skills for Sweden’s workforce (consists of 20, top five listed below)
1. IT Infrastructure and System Management
2. Sales
3. Graphical Design
4. Software Engineering Management and Requirements Gathering
5. Management Consulting, Business Strategy and Analysis

What Stockholm’s workforce looks like – Top industries
1. Technology 16 % (exceeds global average by 15 %)
2. Professional Services 14 %
3. Government/Non-profit 13 % (almost double than global)

What Stockholm’s workforce looks like – Top job function
1. Sales 12 %
2. Operations 8 %
3. Information Technology 8 % (exceeds the global average by 68 %)

Unique/Standout skills of Stockholm’s workforce
1. User Interface
2. Software Engineering Management and Requirements Gathering
3. Strategy and Strategic Planning (including Entrepreneurship and Market Strategies)

Sue made a remark that Sweden has a unique width, from back to front end, that can be seen throughout the report.

Skills that are more likely to have been hired in the past 12 months
1. Social Media Marketing 39 %
2. Mobile Development 34 %
3. Digital and Online Marketing 29 %

Top alma maters of members
1. Stockholm University
2. KTH Royal Institute of Technology
3. Uppsala University

Distribution of degree types
Doctorate Degree 8 %
Master’s Degree 61 %
Bachelor’s Degree 30 %

The global average for Master’s Degree is 32 %

Attracting talent nationally and globally
Stockholm has talent inflow from Uppsala, Gothenburg, United States, United Kingdom and India. Stockholm has no talent outflow. This means that we loose no talent to what we gain, which is extremely rare.

Connection
Members in Stockholm share the most connections both nationally and internationally. Usually there are just local regions, but Stockholm has Copenhagen, London, Olso and New York. Great global hubs.

Some links to check out
http://www.investstockholm.com/news/stockholm-identified-as-tech-talent-magnet/
https://linkedin.confetti.events/
https://twitter.com/sthlmitregion
http://economicgraphchallenge.linkedin.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stockholm-identified-tech-talent-magnet-karin-wanng%C3%A5rd

economicgraph.linkedin.com
#economicgraph

/Paulina

As a student you always have a list of tasks that needs to be done. My personal task list range from programming a mathematical optimization model to doing my laundry. As any other student, I am my own boss in terms of deciding when these tasks needs to be done. This lies in sharp contrast to the working life that I have experienced so far, where you have other people depending on your work getting done in time and definite deadlines. While it may seem like sweet deal to have the freedom of deciding of when your tasks needs to be done, you also have different incentives for actually getting the tasks the done. Rather than letting down your team, you let down yourself when you do not complete your tasks on time. At least for me, this makes the stakes lower for completing tasks when studying compared to when I am working. This opens the door for procrastination, i.e. postponing your work.

According to this article in The Guardian, studies show that as much as 70 % of university students procrastinate in when studying. In the article you get helpful tips such as separating your workspace from where you have fun and avoiding answering emails while completing you tasks. While these are all helpful tips, I would like to make an addition in form of apps that helps you get motivated and more productive. This list should helpful for students and self-employed people (such as entrepreneurs) that have the freedom of choosing when you want work and what tasks you want to complete.

1. Streaks helps you form routines. Choose tasks that you want complete on a regular basis, whether it is daily, semi-daily or weekly. Once the task is completed you mark it as such. After a while, if you stick to your routines, you will have streaks corresponding to how many times in a row you have completed the task. As the streaks gets longer you get more incentive to keep the streak going. This helped me forming a habit of getting up at 7 am every weekday even though my lecture schedule allows me to sleep in basically every day.
   

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2.  Wunderlist is a smart way of keeping track of your tasks that needs to be done. You can categorize and prioritize your tasks and set reminders. Writing this blog post was on my under my todo-list for the course ME2603.
   

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3.  Noisli is a great way of using sounds to create a great environment for studying or working. It has been shown that a moderate level of noise increases creativity and I can personally say that Noisli is a great way of creating your own sound environment and drown out annoying noises.
   

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Indiapreneur #1 pre-event networking session

I attended Indiapreneurs #1, a networking event with a focus on integrating the entrepreneurship network between India and Stockholm with a focus on doing business in India, hosted by Synch Law. I felt that the focus of this session on doing business while overcoming cross-cultural differences was especially refreshing. Every speaker had different insights to share about their entrepreneurship experiences in India, but I found the points put across by Mr Anil Raj, the CEO & Co-Founder at OMC Ltd especially pertinent to what I have learnt in class.

Mr Raj is a veteran of the telecom industry who has previously held senior positions in Ericsson, and went on to co-found the startup OMC Ltd, an India-based power company that aims to provide power to rural parts of India through renewable sources.

I found Mr Raj’s presentation on how he came up with the idea to create the startup OMC Ltd especially relevant to our recent lesson on opportunity, cost and innovation. Mr Raj described how he initially came up with the idea of providing power to the Indian rural population, and proceeded to dominate the market through implementing this idea. Mr Raj highlighted that power is a universal necessity, hence OMC Ltd did not face any first mover disadvantage having to educate the market about their product, but conversely had a first mover advantage as many companies doing business in India mainly focus on developing products for users in the big cities, and leave out the majority of the Indian rural population. OMC Ltd focused on exploiting this opportunity in a timely manner, solving a long-running pain of a lack of readily available power that their market faces.

I also found Mr Raj’s portrayal of OMC Ltd’s business model and creation pertinent to our lesson on business models. OMC Ltd’s business model identified the rural Indian population as a niche customer segment, and created a value proposition to try to solve the pain of the rural population’s lack of available energy. Mr Raj says that having established OMC Ltd’s core business in India, they have plans to apply the same business model to other niche markets, looking towards the Philippine’s rural population to expand his business. I felt that this was a very relevant example of the importance of focusing on a niche segment to establish a business model, and then applying and adapting a tested business model to different market segments.

Apart from the relevance of Mr Raj’s speech to the lessons in class, Mr Raj also highlighted many aspects of India’s business climate that would be relevant to anyone who wants to do business in India. India is a fast growing economy with many different socio-economic groups, and entrepreneurs must be comfortable dealing with the price and quality sensitive Indian market, and the many layers of bureaucracy to overcome to get anything done. From this, I started to realize how much culture can affect the way people do business and start companies in different countries.

Although I was initially apprehensive to go for Indiapreneurs #1 as I was neither from India, nor had any idea about the business climate in India, but I left the event thankful to have come, and listened to many inspiring speakers whose entrepreneurship experiences were both inspiring and enriching to listen to.

In my opinion, there are a few reasons of why Elon Musk releases their patent to the public. Firstly, he wants to control the standards in the industry and speed up the adoption of electric vehicles. This is aligned with their company’s mission to “accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.” By obtaining the patents in the first place, he is discouraging any other company from adopting the same technology to innovate and create a mass market for electric vehicles.

Secondly, having competitors who leverage Tesla patent work actually serve as validation such that their technologies are viable and desirable. It can serve as a strategy to allow Tesla to reach a larger crowd – Crossing the Chasm, over a doubting public.

Thirdly, Tesla have made early investments into production facilities like the Gigafactory, they may be able to change their business model such as to manufacture parts for other automobile manufacturers who are in the same playing fields. This will provide them with an alternate revenue stream until the time when those manufacturers have developed their own supply chains.

Lastly, having such an open environment that encourages information sharing may be the best way to spur creativity and allowing Tesla to challenge themselves constantly to innovate and improve in order to stay in the age of technological advancement.

We will have great program planned  for the course and I hope you will enjoy the class.

Tech Based Entrepreneurship Course Outline 2016

Schedule and Readings 2016

and please read carefully and do not hesitate to ask if you have any questions.