Startups

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Entrepreneurship may be seen as a key to improving society and economies in America and much of the developed world. But how much faith do other cultures put in it, especially those with vastly different beliefs about gender, authority and openness to change? There was perhaps no better place to understand how the rest of the world feels about it than at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit held last month at Stanford University. On stage with President Barack Obama, three young entrepreneurs shared their stories about founding ventures in countries as distant from Silicon Valley – in miles and mindset – as one could imagine. They included the founders of an Egyptian event-promotion app and platform, a startup in Rwanda that turns waste into renewable energy, and a social startup in Peru that empowers under-educated women by teaching them coding and other professional skills. Jean Bosco Nzeyimana, founder and CEO of the Rwandan startup, described one of the biggest differences in mindset between investors in the valley and those in his home country: a respect for elders and a dismissiveness of younger people, especially in regards to tackling societal issues such as waste management and energy creation. “In my culture, it is believed that those great initiatives are started by old people,” Nzeyimana told Obama. “So I tried to disrupt that status quo and created this company. But of course, during this period, no one was even trusting me.” [embed]https://youtu.be/QKB-y6kJFpM[/embed] That was just one of many challenges that entrepreneurs at the summit said they faced back home. And yet, the more than 700 entrepreneurs who flew in from across the globe illustrated how much optimism exists worldwide. Recent research initiatives support growing enthusiasm around entrepreneurship internationally. For instance, a 2010 report published by the Kauffman Foundation showed that new startups are responsible for all net job creation. And more recently, the 2015-16 Global Entrepreneurial Monitor report, which tracks characteristics, rates and societal attitudes around entrepreneurship, found that the positive perceptions around entrepreneurial careers and opportunities were highest in “factor-driven economies” – defined by the World Economic Forum as economies dominated by businesses with a heavy reliance on (unskilled) labor and natural resources. In other words, economies with the highest potential for growth recognize the importance of entrepreneurship towards their future development and are eager to capitalize on the opportunities. With the rise of entrepreneurship-education programs, literary resources and other learning opportunities, gaining access to entrepreneurship training has never been easier. This access to information is incredibly important to the propagation of entrepreneurial ecosystems globally. But being successful as a global entrepreneur means going beyond blanket best practices, learning how to adopt ideas to the specific ecosystem at hand, and developing an entrepreneurial mindset that will serve as an asset in different contexts. Regional differences at play In addition, leaders in the field believe that thinking globally is becoming increasingly important for all entrepreneurs. “Remember that entrepreneurship is a way of life, and being globally minded is no longer a choice if you want to be a successful entrepreneur,” said Rebeca Hwang, a Stanford graduate and lecturer who has worked as an entrepreneur on multiple continents. Noting that entrepreneurs around the world share many personality traits – including a high level of technical or entrepreneurial talent and a hunger to create something amazing – Huang says she sees different entrepreneurial norms and behaviors at play in each region. In general, Europe has available capital and reliable institutions – though a certain sense of complacency and aversion to risk can exist in areas where a non-entrepreneurial career is believed to provide more stability and security. And yet, there is a growing interest in Europe for entrepreneurship, according to Lena Ramfelt, who teaches entrepreneurship, marketing and innovation at Stanford and the Stockholm School of Economics. “In many large cities in Europe, you can almost describe the growing interest as a movement, where you might have to explain why you are not an entrepreneur rather than the other way around,” said Ramfelt, adding that excitement has spread beyond the high-tech sector into areas such as social entrepreneurship and ventures focusing on creative markets. In contrast, Latin America has high potential for fast growth with plenty of young and hungry talent. But the region also faces some institutional challenges, like a lack of venture capital, according to Felipe Jara Schnettler, director of entrepreneurship at the integrated higher-education system INACAP, which is based in Chile. “The missing link in the region, in spite of growing interest in entrepreneurship, is private funding,” Schnettler said. “Although there are people and families with big amounts of capital, there is still little interest in becoming part of a venture capital or angel network. This is mainly due to risk aversion, which may be driven by limited number of success stories so far.” Meanwhile, Asia and South East Asia are booming with entrepreneurship and have tremendous market opportunities. But Hwang explains that the horizontal culture of entrepreneurs can clash with the traditionally hierarchical status quo in many countries there. During a panel on entrepreneurship in China at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, the founder of a venture-capital firm also commented on how the mix of opportunities and challenges make China’s entrepreneurial landscape quite complex and dynamic. “Every day we see new companies, we see new opportunities,” remarked Northern Light Venture Capital Founder Feng Deng. “We also see a lot of challenges in terms of not only in the technology side, but a lot of times it’s the whole environment, for example the government regulations.” As for the Middle East and Africa, political instability and conflicts continue to haunt what are otherwise emerging markets with great potential. The stigma of failure also hinders many potential entrepreneurs, according to Tim Weiss, an academic researcher who studies entrepreneurship in Kenya. “In Kenya, failure is more sticky to the person,” Weiss said. “The repercussions an individual faces for failing make it much riskier to fail than in an environment where failures are understood as an integral part of becoming an entrepreneur. As a result, many entrepreneurs don’t pursue their boldest ideas, even if they have the potential to be the most rewarding.” Given the unique cultural, political and business climates in different regions of the world, experts say global entrepreneurs must learn how to navigate varying conditions and diverse entrepreneurial ecosystems. And due to these diverse conditions, entrepreneurial practices that work in one region or ecosystem may not translate directly to another, meaning that global entrepreneurs must learn to be flexible when it comes to applying ideas that have worked in the past. An “open” question? This dynamic can trickle all the way down to the offices where work is getting done. Stanford Professor Pamela Hinds, who co-directs the Center for Work, Technology and Organization in the School of Engineering, studies the effect of different cultures on innovation. In her research, Hinds has found that certain practices that lead to greater innovation within U.S. organizations can actually hinder innovation in other countries. In a study on the effect of open and unfinished space on innovation, Hinds and her team found that employees at U.S.-based companies thrived in open environments, but the open and unfinished “startup garage environment” was quite problematic in India. “The unfinished nature of the space,” Hinds said, “translated into not feeling very polished. And in India, it was inconceivable to bring customers into this space because it didn’t convey the kind of professionalism that was expected of the organization.” In other words, the cultural differences around unfinished and open space negatively affected the workers’ ability to innovate, even though that same kind of space had been proven to increase innovation in another cultural context. In the study, rather than calling the open and unfinished space a failure, the team in India took what they learned from this experiment and adapted the space to suit their own culture and needs. The result, in the end, was an increase in innovation for this company as well. In describing why the team in India eventually found success, Hinds said it was crucial to have someone in the innovation center in India who understood both cultures and was therefore able to advocate for the needs of the team in India. This research is yet further proof that applying blanket best practices to an organization rarely leads to success. Rather than copying an approach that’s been proven in one country or one environment, Hinds’ work suggests that the most effective entrepreneurs take ideas from other successful companies and adapt them to their own ventures. Having taught entrepreneurship on multiple continents, Hinds has seen equal entrepreneurial potential in students across the board. It’s when students leave their idyllic academic environments and start working in the “real world” and confront the cultural norms of each region that potential fades into conformity. At heart, however, Hinds said, “the innovation potential in people in different places is pretty much the same.”

Business classes are not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship, and yes, some of the most storied startup founders were college dropouts. But many others say they benefited from academic courses and experiential learning opportunities that focused on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Joshua Reeves, the soft-spoken CEO of a payroll and benefits startup called Gusto, began one talk on entrepreneurship by saying he attended the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar at Stanford University 14 quarters in a row while majoring in electrical engineering. Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, the founders of Instagram, met as students in an entrepreneurship work/study program that combines classes, mentoring and other immersive experiences. They and other entrepreneurs who went through the nine-month Mayfield Fellows Program, also at Stanford, say it was the most insightful experience they had as students. Other alumni of the program include startup founders like Kit Rodgers of Cryptography Research, Avid Larizadeh of Bottica and Google Ventures, David Merrill of Sifteo and Bobby Lee of BTCC. Each one of them possesses innate talents and drive, that along with insights they gained as students, propelled them to entrepreneurial success. Elon Musk may embody the notion of a naturally gifted entrepreneur, but the aforementioned founders are proof that the necessary skills and mindset can be learned. The thought-leaders seminar and fellowship program are both offered through the entrepreneurship center in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering. The late Peter Drucker, one of the leading management thinkers of the 20th century, said it best: “The entrepreneurial mystique? It’s not magic, it’s not mysterious, and it has nothing to do with the genes. It’s a discipline. And, like any discipline, it can be learned.” Yes, some will argue that entrepreneurship is still more art than science, at times requiring improvisation in the face of unique and uncertain situations. But there are obvious characteristics that successful entrepreneurs tend to share. Among them are: a personal passion to solve a problem a vision for what’s innovative the skills to build a product or service, and a business around it the tenacity to constantly seek feedback, iterate and pivot the ability to empathize with and inspire those around you. Emergence of entrepreneurship education Donald Kuratko, a professor of entrepreneurship at Indiana University, Bloomington, traces the history of the academic field back to 1971, when the University of Southern California first launched a concentration in entrepreneurship for MBA students. By the early 1980s, more than 300 universities offered courses in entrepreneurship and small business, and over the next decade, that number grew to 1,050 schools, Kuratko states in his article, “The Emergence of Entrepreneurship Education: Development, Trends, and Challenges.” When it was published in 2005, entrepreneurship education had exploded to more than 2,200 courses at over 1,600 schools around the country. Kuratko also counted more than 100 established and funded entrepreneurship centers at the time, noting emerging trends in “experiential learning” such as class projects, startup competitions and field trips exposing students to industry. “Today, the words used to describe the new innovation regime of the 21st century are: dream, create, explore, invent, pioneer, and imagine!” Kuratko wrote. “Entrepreneurship educators must have the same innovative drive that is expected from entrepreneurship students.” However, Kuratko notes — as do others — that more progressive universities are offering entrepreneurship courses across a wide range of schools and departments. In particular, “it is critical to expand entrepreneurship education to engineering and science departments where most of these technologies originate,” entrepreneurship professors Tom Byers (Stanford) and Andrew Nelson (University of Oregon) state in the Chicago Handbook of University Technology Transfer and Academic Entrepreneurship. Byers and Nelson, along with Richard Dorf, an engineering professor at the University of California, Davis, wrote the textbook Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise. And in it, they explain why they focus on the tech sector, and on educating science and engineering students as well as those studying business: “The technology sector represents a significant portion of the economy of every industrialized nation. In the United States, more than one-third of the gross national product and about half of private-sector spending on capital goods are related to technology. It is clear that national and global economic growth depends on the health and contributions of technology businesses.” At the university that spawned Silicon Valley, Stanford’s engineering school offers courses, fellowships and other learning opportunities to help students develop the knowledge, skills and behaviors to be entrepreneurial in life. And through Stanford’s involvement with the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation – known simply as the Epicenter – students and faculty far beyond the valley have brought entrepreneurship and innovation to their campuses and curriculum. Funded by a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Epicenter led initiatives that turned thousands of college students and faculty around the country into inspired advocates for bringing a focus on entrepreneurship and innovation to engineering education — touching about 300 U.S. institutions over the past five years. The Epicenter’s leaders recently sat down and discussed how far entrepreneurship education has come in the last 20 years, and what the future holds for integrating more of it into engineering curriculum. Creating innovators, not experts In one instance, an entire engineering college is devoted to graduating innovators by tearing down the academic silos that have historically kept students narrowly focused on their major. Olin College of Engineering, in Needham, Mass., does this in recognition that the next Steve Jobs won’t be an expert in just one discipline — and that the late CEO of Apple didn’t even major in engineering. At a recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders talk at Stanford, the president of Olin College described how the traditional model of higher learning separates the disciplines and forces like-minded students to stick together. When instead, Richard Miller said, what aspiring innovators need is to be exposed to a diversity of perspectives. Citing research out of Stanford, Miller explained that innovation happens where three objectives overlap: feasibility, viability and desirability. But at a typical university, most of the students who focus on feasibility (can it be done?) are in the engineering school, while the students concerned with viability (is it financially possible?) are working on MBAs. Meanwhile, the students who care most about desirability (people’s emotions) are usually found in the humanities and social sciences. “If we’re going to create innovators, we need to do a better job of integrating these in the same head, so that one person can see the whole picture,” said Miller, a leader in the movement to revolutionize and reshape engineering education. “The big message for engineering schools: No amount of doubling down on math and science courses is going to improve the output of innovators.” The point is that the most important traits in entrepreneurship aren’t necessarily inherited or the result of total luck. While charisma and happenstance certainly play a role, prominent educators agree that people can learn to be entrepreneurs. Fortunately, there is no shortage of programs, organizations and universities that want to prepare the next generation of innovators – and the need for them has never been greater.

The concept of social entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly popular. People talk about great entrepreneurs like Jessica Jackley, co-founder of the microfunding company Kiva, and Blake Myscokie, who founded TOMS, which donates a pair of shoes to the needy for every pair of shoes sold. But let’s be honest: What if we want to contribute to social causes but are not ready to become the next “great social entrepreneur,” because we also have other things we care about? I have a friend who is really passionate about improving clean water supplies in developing countries, especially Africa. However, he has a job he loves, along with his hiking trips and friends – the fact that he cares does not mean he is ready to abandon his current life to move to Africa and dedicate it to the cause of clean water. There are a wide range of entrepreneurs today, from Hollywood celebrities championing social causes to those toiling in obscurity on technological advancements. Is there any middle ground for average folks like us, who care deeply but don’t have the bandwidth to devote 100 percent to an immense social mission? Student organizations are the most common occupants of this middle ground. Since high school and throughout my years at Stanford, I was part of an association called the Southeast Asia Leadership Network (SEALNet). Every year, SEALNet organizes community services trips for U.S. colleges students to Southeast Asian countries. Each trip is tasked with a social mission in a specific developing region, such as mentoring orphans in Vietnam, supporting underprivileged immigrants in the Philippines or improving hygienic measures in Indonesia. The SEALNet leadership board is almost 100 percent students, who spend on average 10 to 20 hours per week recruiting and preparing for SEALNet summer trips, and putting on regular bonding activities to strengthen SEALNet’s fast-expanding global community. Five years ago, when I was a freshman at Stanford, I thought about bringing parts of the wonderful entrepreneurship education that I, fortunately, have had the opportunity to receive, to my home country, Vietnam. In Spring Quarter, with much-cherished support from Tom Kosnik, a management science and engineering lecturer at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, Viet Youth Entrepreneurs (VYE) was born out of his course Global Entrepreneurial Marketing. Missioned to promote the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Vietnam, VYE organizes startup-education bootcamps, startup-internship programs, hackathons, business plan-pitching competitions, tech workshops, panel discussions, startup job fairs, and we most recently published a book on entrepreneurship. Now among the most prominent startup-community builders in Vietnam, the organization has thrived in the past five years 100 percent from the contributions of volunteers, most of whom work part time for VYE while carrying on their other jobs and ventures. Many people ask me why we do not focus on building VYE to become the next big global social venture, powered by a full-time, well-structured team. I do not think everything needs to grow to be the next big thing (and I know this is a particularly strange statement in Silicon Valley, where the ultimate goal of the average startup founder is to make his/her venture the next big unicorn). VYE’s impacts on Vietnam’s youth and on its startup community have been proven. We put on new programs and events all year round, and are continuously modifying our approaches to better fit with the country’s fast-changing startup environment. Different from a traditional startup, where growth and cash flow are often the main focus, VYE is more of a community – a house hosting individuals who wish to spend time on supporting young Vietnam-based startups. The community factor is key to part-time social ventures like VYE. A strong sense of community is the only way to motivate a group of part-time volunteers to commit to the organization’s overall mission. People voluntarily decide to offer their time because they believe in the mission; they then voluntarily continue to stick with the organization and deepen their commitment because they enjoy the friends they work with and the new friends they will meet through the work. Thus, shaping the right culture and facilitating optimal bonding between the officials have always been the focus of VYE’s leadership team. Community is also one of the key perks for joining so-called part-time social ventures. Many VYE volunteers have found new ideas, inspiration, trusted friends, co-founders, and even girlfriends/boyfriends through plugging into our network. Apart from the core founding team, all VYE volunteers are assigned on a per-project basis, and thus are not meant to stay after the project ends. The more dedicated ones find time to come back and hold more permanent roles with the organization; some do not take on official responsibilities but keep coming back to support when they can. This model is ultimately laissez-faire – our organization is basically a group of everyday people who wish to contribute but can’t commit full time to VYE, who are nonetheless bound by the sense of community and culture that we have built. I do not believe we have to wait until we have attained sufficient time, resources and determination to start thinking about “social good” startups. If we can find a channel to contribute as much as we can, when we can, society will benefit hugely from the additional 10 percent time contribution from millions of people – those with good intentions but who are not yet ready to become the next Muhammad Yunus due to other commitments. VYE is one community model for part-time entrepreneurs, and I am sure there are many other viable models out there. You just have to go look until you find one that fits your life.

In the era of the entrepreneur, clever ideas can seem like a dime a dozen. But it’s the committed willingness to act on an idea that turns an epiphany into something much more than an ephemeral intention. To illustrate this, we present insights from the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL) Seminar, featuring recent speakers sharing different but equally poignant perspectives on the value and mechanics of taking action. One of the most notable hotbeds for technological leaps is Alphabet, and in particular, X, its well-known “moonshot factory.” From balloon-enabled Internet to self-driving cars, the division has earned a reputation for conceiving some of the most audacious ideas for improving our lives through technology and seeing them through – at least to the prototype phase. Astro Teller, “captain of moonshots” at X, spoke a little of the lab’s secret sauce at his ETL talk, saying that its success starts with a culture that sounds contrary to its mission: While crazy ideas are encouraged and celebrated, they are immediately scrutinized for flaws in feasibility. Calling himself a “culture engineer,” Teller emphasizes the importance of fostering workplace norms that encourage the sharing of big ideas, and of creating a space where people feel safe knowing no limits will be imposed on the imagination. Teller notes that adults often feel they have lost their sense of creativity and miss out because of it. The rate-limiting step to innovation, as he sees it, is that we don’t put all our ideas out on the table because of our self-defeating doubts. https://youtu.be/Uv5irB6L54c Now, once you’ve gotten all those great ideas out in the open and have identified the one with the most potential, it’s time to execute. And while there are many ways to move forward, there’s a tried-and-true formula that works for most teams – whether they are in large corporations or small startups. It’s called product management, and below, entrepreneur Minnie Ingersoll describes its three phases from her time at Google, where she led efforts to create Google Fiber, deploy a citywide WiFi network and improve Google AdWords – all non-trivial tasks for sure. Now the co-founder and chief operating officer of the online used-car marketplace Shift, Ingersoll describes the three phases as 1) defining the vision, 2) deciding what product to build, and 3) execution. The first phase involves getting to know who you’re building for and what problem you’re solving. After all, what good is a solution if you haven’t taken the time to put yourself in the shoes of the user? The latter two phases are setting up a product roadmap and, perhaps most importantly, holding yourself and your team accountable to the product milestones you established. This is where relentless execution on the vision you crafted in the first step of the process separates the ideas that come to fruition from those that don’t. https://youtu.be/iyN5SjPumc0 But imagine a circumstance where, after much debate and deliberation, your team decides to move forward with an idea you vehemently disagree with. What then? After all, we’re proud of our ideas and often find it difficult to set them aside. According to Bob Sutton, organizational-behavior expert and professor in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, that’s precisely when we should forego ego and give 100 percent. Citing the wisdom of late Intel co-founder Andy Grove, Sutton says that by fully committing to the project you initially resisted, you’ll know that, if it fails, the flaw was in the idea itself and not in the execution. https://youtu.be/oZw2cg8AXDw To have a good idea without the ability or drive to bring it to life is like having a dinner table without sturdy legs: It’s nothing more than an illusion of having something valuable. This is not to diminish the value of a good idea, which is half the battle in and of itself. But to discover an opportunity worth pursuing and follow through with committed and thoughtful execution, bolstered by strong team alignment, is the very essence of entrepreneurship.