Last week I finished teaching my first entrepreneurship summer school course at the LSE. For the first time, I had to deeper reflect on how to “teach” a topic that I was so far somehow practicing (at Sandbox) and researching (at the LSE).

Until now, I have been trying to somehow bridge the boundaries between academia and practice, by synergizing the content, contacts, and learnings from both fields whenever possible. It has been both challenging and rewarding to cope with stakeholders that operate in very different domains with succinct mindsets and approaches.

While it took me a while to reconcile these two worlds without losing my own identity and having a real and lasting impact in both areas, the quest of how to actually “teach” entrepreneurship was relatively new to me.

It was interesting to hear many entrepreneurs around me questioning if entrepreneurship can be taught at all; and many researchers questioning if bringing in practical approaches wouldn’t depart from the values of rigorous teaching. Having these different perspectives in the back of my mind, I started preparing the lecture presentations.

What we did

I had the great luck to be embedded into a well-functioning team of lecturers and teachers, lead by Fei Qin. Fei combines rigorous theoretical approaches with practical examples, and her open mindset allowed for some adjustments of the traditional structure of many entrepreneurship courses. Theory-based lectures were complemented by case-based classes, and students were not only required to write an exam, but rather to prepare their own business plans. To inspire the 220 students, we aimed to invite young, accomplished entrepreneurs that the students could directly relate to, as they are “part of the target group”.

For this reason, we invited Sandboxers Lucian Tarnowski (25, the World Economic Forum’s youngest European Young Global Leader ever), Rajeeb Dey (24, O2’s Entrepreneur of the Year), Jay Bregman (founder of Ecourier) and David Langer (27, UK’s “rising star”), who took Dave McClure’s brilliant idea to compare VC/entrepreneur matchmaking with dating (in both cases, “you want to show that you’re interested, but avoid that you seem desperate, showing that you have alternative choices”.)

Key challenges and learnings

There were certain exciting challenges and learnings arising along the journey:

 -     Teaching vs experiencing entrepreneurship: as mentioned above, there is a huge divide on the question if entrepreneurship can actually be taught, or if it has to be a “trial and error process”. I believe that these two are not substitutes, but rather complements. The above mentioned approach tried to satisfy both the “theoretical understanding” and the practical experience: learning about theory (e.g. psychological traits of entrepreneurs), being inspired by practitioners (e.g. about how they built their company), doing case studies (to understand patterns that distinguish success from failure), and finally writing their own business plan and partly developing prototypes (that is, to engage in a team-based trial and error-process). All together, a learning-journey that might cut down (avoidable) mistakes in the future, while showing the potential opportunity-scope that our transformational times provide.

-          Speaking in public, at conferences and other events, is one thing; you want to entertain and bring across a certain message. However, delivering a constant and exciting message over several weeks is very different; you want to keep the excitement high, while telling a coherent story. Learning: make clear from the beginning what’s the storyline, how pieces fit together, what the desired learnings of the story are, and how this applies to the life-world of the audience.

-          Having a very diverse group (35 nations, age 19-35) poses the challenge on how to find a good “common ground”; you don’t want to be too fast for some, but not too slow for others. Learning: Get feedback very early on in the process on which pace is best, and offer slower students to meet after class/motivate them to set up learning groups.

-          Keeping the balance between “being casual” and “establishing respect”, between being a “friend” and being a “mentor” is key. “Leading by example” proved to be the most effective solution; similar to a flat-hierarchy enterprise, you win attention via good arguments and preparation, not necessarily authority.  

-          Establishing clear rules, complemented by incentives: many students are used to negotiating several issues, from when to hand in reports to when to arrive to class. What proved to work was a mixture between establishing "non-changeable rules” (I love the idea of a “paradox of weakness”, whereby the (extended) argument goes that decisions can be made easier and fairer when it seems that you cannot influence the process), and “incentives”. Examples for incentive-setting where: suggesting that usually in the first 5 minutes the exam-relevant hints would be given (increases motivation and punctuality), or suggesting that depending on their attitude they could be introduced to VCs/entrepreneurs/selective networks (increases participation).

With all its exciting challenges, this journey has been one of the most rewarding I have been lucky to experience so far; seeing the learning curve of students (without previous knowledge in business writing a cool business plan within 3 weeks), and having them mention that they “now think big” or “learned that I can have a real impact in the world”, is a great incentive to take on similar projects in the future.

 And the powerful ideas of Mark Twain, with whom's quote we saw off the students, will hopefully leave a lasting footprint beyond this course: "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did so. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."

Sandboxer Nathaniel Whittemoore of Change.org and Assetmap recently wrote about the art of connecting people (see below); he argues that real super-connectors are good at three things: keeping track of details about colleagues & friends; keeping track of what their communities need; and being trusted/reputable enough to be taken seriously.

This is in accordance with some of our key learnings at Sandbox; interestingly though, there might be at least one more important dimension to be considered: being good at communicating the "reason why". I've seen introductions of great people that could potentially have benefitted both sides, where however the plain phrase of "the two of you should connect" without further explanation triggered that a) the introduced people wasted time in trying to figure out why they should meet, as often the issue the connector had in mind is not directly obvious; or b) that one party felt it was not a mutually beneficial introduction, as more often than not the "unmoderated" discussion will lead to the key issue of one party, sometimes neglecting the other's need or how these two could have been matched more effectively (often detecting and making explicit these "structural holes" between problems/issues (not only people) proves to be one of the main functions of the connector).

We plan to publish a report with some key learnings about these issues (stimulated by both our LSE-research on social networks and Sandbox-practice on community-management) in the coming year, so stay tuned;-)

Nathaniel's post below is a good intro to the topic:

Here's a little idea and its big implication. The idea is that in a world of increasingly robust information about social networks, simply being able to connect people is more of a "commodity" than at any time in history. The implication is that to be seen as a real "connector" --- a designation incredibly valuable in just about any type of business -- you have to think more expansively about what it means to help people.

Connectors are a business archetype that most people are familiar with. They are the people who always seem to know the right people. They're the folks you talk to when you know you have a problem, but you're not sure who is the right person to help -- or even who is the right type of person to help.

Connectors are intensely valuable, particularly in industries that rely on networks. An example is venture capital, in which networks are deployed to find great investment deals as well as to help portfolio companies find the particular resources and relationships they need to succeed. Another example is nonprofits, which rely on social capital in the place of financial capital, and in which networks are called upon every day to help the organization move forward.

Super connectors tend to be really good at three things. The first is that they keep track of lots of details about lots of their friends and professional contacts. This is the area in which the average person is catching up to the super connector. While it still takes diligence, its never been easier to keep track of who you know, the sorts of things they like and dislike, etc.

This is the social glue that is making the ability to generally connect people across your network more of a commodity. Better information about who you know means a better ability to connect people who should know each other. This is a good thing; connecting people shouldn't be the provence of a special class of people, it should just be the way we think to help each other day in and day out.

The second thing that super connectors tend to be really good at is that they keep track of lots of details about what their communities need. Really good connectors are constantly thinking about how they can help, which means figuring out ways to acquire information about the specific resources and information their people are seeking. Although the social communication infrastructure has made this easier, figuring out how to know what people need is still difficult, and great connectors still do it better than the rest.

The final thing that super connectors have is a high personal reputation that makes the people they're connecting take notice. I'm in the process of fundraising for my startup, and it had completely reinforced this fact. As I try to get access to investors, I'm not just searching for people their connected with to introduce us, I'm searching for people who they're connected to in a relevant context, and who have a high enough personal brand that the investor is going to give us a serious look. The implication of this third piece is that to truly kick ass at helping, you have to be the type of person who has a general reputation for excellence.

So, to sum up, information in social networks has made it easier for most people to keep track of, and connect, their friends and colleagues. Information about needs isn't perfect, but it will get better (Assetmap is going to solve this problem).

But the third piece -- having serious personal brand equity -- is something that technology will never really be able to supplant. That's a reputation that comes from diligence and general excellence. In the 21st century, most people will get better at making connections; the super connectors will be those who have cultivated such a high reputation that the connections they facilitate become self-fulfilling prophecies of collaboration.

"There are leaders, and people who lead", Simon Sinek in his TEDxPudget speech argues. Formal leaders lead by authority and answer the "what and how", informal leaders lead by inspiration and answer the "why".

"Inspired leadership" seems to have the potential for much bigger and long-lasting impact, as it triggers feelings of belonging and purpose; without doubt, Martin Luther King was well advised to give the "I have a dream" speech, rather than the "I have a plan"-one.

At Sandbox, we believe that bringing together young inspirers that share similar values and "purposes" will have a positive impact not only on their respective lives and stakeholders. Rather, their "leadership by example" potentially catalyzes similar movements than MLK's, ranging from democratizing education to reducing poverty.

I recently stumbled over a blogpost of Volan's Alejandro Litovsky, a great summary of McKinsey Quarterly's 10 innovation trends catalyzed by technological developments.

It greatly corresponds with the research at LSE's Innovation and Co-Creation Lab, where we focus on "business model innovation at the base of the pyramid", in the belief that the most fruitful radical innovation is created in resource-constrained contexts and on the level of business models, not only on product- or process-dimensions.

"A new article on Mckinsey Quarterly outlines the top 10 innovation trends in business that are being enabled by new technologies — and shows how they trends are re-shaping the challenges and opportunities for companies, society and their ability to reach sustainability goals.

These trends are significant for our innovation work at Volans, partly because they reflect a growing way of thinking about the pathways to scale of business solutions to social and environmental problems (e.g. think telcom operators in Africa providing banking solutions to the poor instead of banks).

But also because they say something about the way we work, as we find ourselves increasingly designing and delivering projects by working collaboratively with others — something I find fascinating in terms of management, as the project teams look more like distributed networks than traditional, hierarchical institutions.

Mckinsey’s ten high tech-supported business innovation trends are:

Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream. Getting incentives right for people to participate in a collaborative design process is essential, as ‘co-creators often value reputation more than money.’

Trend 2: Making the network the organization. Suggests that the ‘more porous, networked organisations of the future will need to organize its work around critical tasks rather than modelling it to the constraints imposed by corporate structures.’

Trend 3: Collaboration at scale. Issues like carbon emissions and slashed travel budgets are creating incentives for companies to invest in collaborative technologies like video conferencing  and shared electronic working spaces. A company that reduced the physical travel of its employees’ and made their work patterns more collaborative through networks, reported that 80% of their sales staff claimed to have higher productivity levels and a better lifestyle.

Trend 4: Growing the ‘Internet of Things’. Business models are changing as many ubiquitous devices, from refrigerators to cars, become connected to the internet and transmit information. So for example, the pricing of car insurance can now be calculated on the base of the risk of driving behaviour, rather than on the driver’s demographic characteristics.

Trend 5: Experimentation and big data. Leveraging large data-sets about user and consumer preferences is enabling organizations to refine their products and services in new ways — in a mode of permanent lab experimentation.

Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world. Here’s a fact: The electricity produced to power the world’s data centers generates greenhouse gases on the scale of countries like Argentina and the Netherlands. And while technology can also create a massive efficiency in energy consumption (through e.g. smart meters and smart grids), the greening of the IT revolution is, and will continue to be, a major innovation challenge.

Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service. Asset owners are starting to create services for what have been traditionally sold as products. In B2B environments, this allows both companies and consumers to purchase units of a service and to account for them as a variable cost instead of undertaking large capital investments, freeing them of the hassles of buying and maintaining a product. Think Zipcar or cloud computing.

Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model. The “freemium” business model, like Flickr, Pandora and Skype, is creating a new set of opportunities. Because those paying for the service benefit from a larger community of users, the greater the number of free users there is, the more valuable the service becomes for those who are paying.

Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid. Disruptive business models ‘arise when when technology combines with extreme market conditions, such as customer demand for very low price points, poor infrastructure, hard-to-access suppliers, and low-cost curves for talent.’ One example is the M-Pesa banking service provided by the African telcom provider, Safaricom, which overcomes the difficulty that banking institutions have to reach poor people in distant areas, by  allowing users to sell airtime minutes as if it was virtual cash.

Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid. With critical sustainability challenges hitting governments around the world, particularly in cities (where over 70% of the world’s population is likely to be living in by 2050), technology is enabling a new way for governments to organize solutions. From the smart coordination of the transport system, to smart metering of electricity, to smart sensors to control water use and quality. These solutions are helping authorities and communities re-imagine the way public goods are (co)created."

Sandbox, Singularity University, and Sparkseed are about to repeat the idea-flashmob-phenomenon of TEDxVolcano; within 3 days, Sandbox-ambassadors Zain Jaffer, Bjoern Lasse Herrmann, and Max Marmer have created an epic event: rallying the support of many of the Silicon Valley's most relevant players, they will assemble around 220 young leaders from all fields, from almost as many nations as represented at the United Nations. They will be joined by TEDsters, White House staff, CEOs of major organizations, and many of the people who have made Silicon Valley into what it is today.

"StartUp Chile" is an initiative of the Chilean Government to attract early stage entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Chile. They want to rebuild their country through innovation and entrepreneurship, and the government provides a $40,000 grant to a startup that opts to locate to Chile for at least 6 months. Might be a cool opportunity for flexible early-stage companies!

For more information drop me a line or have a look at: http://www.corfo.cl/startupchile/Default.html