Strategy

There are many factors that can inhibit entrepreneurship from thriving in a particular region. Perhaps it’s lack of access to capital. Or maybe governments put up too many barriers to startup creation, either intentionally or unintentionally. The region may not have existing entrepreneurship models with which to inspire the next generation of growth. Even cultural or societal traditions may serve as roadblocks to innovation and a willingness to try new ideas. In the following videos, successful entrepreneurs and political figures discuss a number of the specific challenges to entrepreneurship in Latin America. High Friction and Weak Venture Capital Resources While serial entrepreneur Wences Casares concedes startup success rates are low around the world, he argues that Latin America-based startups face additional challenges due to friction points in the regional ecosystem. Fellow entrepreneur Meyer Malka explains why venture capital is “wired differently” in Latin America, and how venture support is different in Silicon Valley and Latin America. Casares also outlines an intriguing benefit to building talented technical teams in the developing world, indicating a possible advantage over Silicon Valley. A Need for Reliable Institutions Protego CEO Pedro Aspe believes greater amounts of education are necessary for entrepreneurship to flourish in a region. In this video from an Endeavor Entrepreneur Summit, Aspe also articulates why entrepreneurship can only grow in societies with reliable governmental institutions. As a former secretary of finance in Mexico, Aspe emphasizes the importance of removing discretionary power, in matters of trade and finance, from the hands of public officials in order increase the reliability of an economic system. Lack of Entrepreneurial Thinking and Education Chilean science professors are not used to thinking in terms of startups, says Juan Andrés Fontaine, Chile’s Minister of Economy, Development and Tourism. In this video, STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig asks Minister Fontaine to identify skills that students should be developing to become better entrepreneurs, and what Chile’s universities are doing to address these needs. Fontaine expresses his desire for students to take risks and learn to solve problems using an entrepreneurial frame of mind, and why this type of education can unlock economic growth and opportunities.

In all the excitement around creating a new product or starting a fresh company, even seasoned entrepreneurs can lose sight of the importance of connecting with customers. Maybe customers aren’t that interested in what you’re selling. Maybe your product doesn’t actually solve a problem they have. Maybe listening to customer feedback is the key to turning your ho-hum offering into a product they just can’t live without. To keep these very important people in the front of your mind, enjoy these excellent insights on connecting with your customers. Use Technology to Enchant Customers In the clip below, entrepreneur and author Guy Kawasaki explains how technology implementation affects a company’s ability to enchant customers. Kawasaki urges companies to “remove roadblocks” when it comes to helping customers interact with a product, and he also offers tips on the best types of interactions and information to offer to be successful in social media environments. Acting on Customer Discovery Customer feedback simply cannot be outsourced, according to serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. Here he shares an anecdote demonstrating the importance of speaking directly to customers. Blank recalls how an entrepreneur was forced to listen to customer needs and tried to alter his product accordingly. These changes turned single-digit sales into the thousands, and resulted in an eventual $400 million company sale. Acquire Customers with the Right Model Originally, Box.net customers were charged for online storage when they signed up with the company. However, CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie realized the opportunity to grow the customer base by lowering barriers to product adoption. In this clip, Levie describes the company’s successful implementation of the “freemium” business model, which not only increased their number of customers, but also served as a future differentiator from larger competitors.

How do some ideas take flight when others never get off the ground? What causes audiences to engage while being constantly bombarded with media images and stories? Stanford professor Jennifer Aaker seeks answers to these questions, and works to understand the core components to building powerful ideas that grab audiences and move them to action. Aaker is co-author of The Dragonfly Effect, a book that guides individuals and organizations to use social media to advance social change. During her visit to the ETL seminar series, she shared principles to guide the crafting of stories and ideas in the social media sphere. It turns out that a person’s happiness can play a key role in how and when they choose to take action. However, happiness is not the same for everyone. The Paradoxes of Happiness The idea of happiness is more complex than you think, according to Aaker, who describes a number of happiness paradoxes. The first paradox is that individuals have varying conceptions of happiness, depending on factors such as age, gender, and culture. The second paradox is that each person’s conception of happiness constantly changes as they move through life. The third paradox is a false belief that meaning can be built solely through short-term happiness, when a mix of both short- and long-term happiness is required. In the following video, Aaker explains how the concept of happiness changes over a lifetime. https://youtu.be/Pwsyq4idyuQ Create Environments That Allow for Happiness Aaker believes a growing body of research shows that attaining a state of happiness often requires individuals to “unplug” from the search of trying to “find” happiness. Perhaps time and resources would be better spent on trying to create environments that allow for happiness to develop organically. If so, what would such an environment be built upon? Aaker identifies three key factors that need to be present in environments to encourage happiness. The environment should: Enable people to build meaning Enable people to find connections Allow people to feel they are a part of something bigger Aaker describes the happiness-enabling factors in this video. https://youtu.be/WHsGUL49kr0 Instant Brands and Social Action As the shifting conception of happiness can mean different things to different people, sometimes delivering a compelling story to an audience can achieve meaning and subsequent action. Aaker illustrates this idea with the emotional story of Sameer Bhatia and Vinay Chakravarthy. When both men were diagnosed with leukemia, their friends led an integrated social media campaign to organize bone marrow drives in an effort to find good donor matches. Team Sameer and Team Vinay became instant brands, powered by web 2.0 tools and a compelling story, with the single goal of registering 20,000 individuals. Sadly, even though good matches were found for both Sameer and Vinay, both men did eventually pass away from leukemia. However, in just 11 weeks, the social media campaign successfully resulted in the registration of over 24,000 South Asians, a group that is commonly underrepresented in the bone marrow registry. This type of lightening fast social action shows how a powerful, meaningful story can connect with audiences through social media, and drive audiences to make positive social change. Learn about 100K Cheeks, a Stanford University-based advocacy group dedicated to increasing the number of people enrolled in the international bone marrow registry.

While CEOs may be able to pick-up early on market trends, they cannot see the future with certainty. They approach each day, as we all do, knowing they will be presented with new information and unexpected changes in their business, their particular market sector, or the general economy. If everything is constantly changing, what is the most rational management mindset to have in the face of this environment? Get comfortable with ambiguity. In the clip below, NVIDIA co-founder Jen-Hsun Huang describes his ability to “see around the fuzzy edges” and be comfortable with ambiguity. In the current economic and financial environment, this ability may be more critical than ever before. According to Huang, CEOs my have varying characteristics and attitudes when it comes to communication and management styles. However, he sees the ability to be comfortable with ambiguity as a much more common trait among successful CEOs. Are you comfortable with ambiguity? Watch the video below.

Approximately half of Amazon.com’s revenue comes from outside the United States, according to the company’s Senior Vice President of International Retail, Diego Piacentini. This makes global strategy a key component to the company’s continued success. During Piacentini’s visit to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar, he explained that, for Amazon, global strategy means delivering a consistent customer experience based on their original vision: Allow customers to discover the products they want to buy at the lowest possible price. Amazon aims to be the “most customer-centric company on the planet.” But what do you build, and how do you act, to make this mean something? Not Everyone Thinks Customer First “Start with the customer and work backwards.” Many companies publicly claim to think about their customers first. However, a fully realized commitment to be customer-centric requires a disciplined approach to developing new products and programs. This is a critical step in Amazon’s process; their logic always takes into consideration what the customer is thinking. “Start with the customer and work backwards,” says Piacentini. An example of this process appears in Amazon’s popular Kindle reading device. Once the company realized how easy it was to purchase a book on the Kindle, they added a purchase process step to allow customers to confirm whether the purchase was intended or just a mistake. In this clip, Piacentini shares Amazon’s idea of thinking customer first. Keep Your Core Values When a company expands into foreign territories, common thinking dictates the company must learn to do business according to cultural norms. But Piacentini feels Amazon is better served by discovering ways to continue to deliver on the company’s customer driven vision, even if it goes against cultural business expectations. While the mechanisms and process may need to adjust, the customer experience and the company’s core values must remain consistent across the globe. According to Piacentini, when Amazon began doing business in China in 2004, some of the company’s core values came into conflict with traditional business practice. After a sudden competitive price drop for the latest Harry Potter book, Amazon refunded the price difference to recent purchasers of the book. While this decision came as a shock to Amazon’s regional business partners, it also maintained Amazon’s core value commitment to low prices for customers. The Myth of Best Practices “In our business model, everything is equal unless proven with data that it needs to be different.” Best practices are often just good intentions, says Piacentini. Moreover, good intentions don’t work — mechanisms work. In Amazon’s view, good mechanisms make for complete processes.” In our business model, everything is equal unless proven with data that it needs to be different,” says Piacentini. Amazon refers to its business model as the “virtuous cycle”, where growth is central, driven by product selection, customer experience, sales results, and lower prices. By focusing on this business cycle, Amazon honors the desires of its global customers as, according to Piacentini, it turns out that all customers like low prices, fast shipping, and access to Amazon’s large selection of products. Piacentini describes the myth of best practices in the following clip. Take Risks Outside Your Core Business Piacentini admires Amazon’s willingness to take risks outside of their core business, and he points to some prime examples. Amazon’s revenue flow from its main retail business is seasonal, particularly in the western world. This means that a great deal of the company’s information technology resources previously went unused in other parts of the year. This issue became an opportunity when the company began offering Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing service that allows companies to replace their web servers. What were once unused servers became a rental revenue stream. Another example of taking a risk outside of the company’s core business was the development and release of the Kindle reading device. Piacentini says that building hardware was “clearly outside the company’s comfort zone, but we didn’t want to turn out like Kodak.” Through risk-taking and customer focus, Amazon feels positioned to maintain its dominance in the online retail space. Watch the entire Diego Piacentini seminar at eCorner.