Tag: Entrepreneurship

Unlocking Value in Start Ups: Refocus on Operational Processes

I have been fortunate enough to work for Fortune 500 Consulting firms at one end of the curve to advising a migration non profit focused on cultural activism in Singapore at the other end. The bigger picture and the rhetoric, often boils down to dollars and cents during performance review, as donors/funders need to evaluate the ROI. We live in a business environment dominated by mega trends of political shocks, declining oil and commodity prices and flat value chains; where the consumer/client knows the set of data as you, the product manager. The information asymmetry between client and vendor has vanished. Machine Learning and Big Data is transforming the service economy, where specialists will dominate and entry-level jobs will disappear in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In this scenario, operations is often under rated in the every day running of the business. They maximize the leverage available make sure the product/service is delivered at the right price point to the consumer. Ideas are simply not enough; there needs to be implementation excellence to unpacking the black box called value, easy to define, harder to deliver though.

Non Profit Platforms and Business Start Ups need to move beyond the ‘idea’ that they are pursuing whether it is a cause or a product and invest into expertise. The disruption has to be backed by professional teams, which focus on long-term bets, in value creation. The ‘Big Idea’ is brand equity but operating teams have to aggressive in funding, program management and innovation. Building teams and products that the market needs is the simple truth. Non-profits need to invest in operations as much as for profit peers. Being sexy is not cool all the time. Think Rahul Yadav, and contrast it with Martin Sorrell of WPP, who built a holding company around which brands evolved (HBR, July/August 2016). Have patience and do the right thing otherwise being out of business does not take time; the same advice is valid for careers too. The career of the entrepreneur follows a particular product lifecycle too.

 

Activists as Entrepreneurs: Boot Strapping to Fund Raising

Activists are pejoratively called ‘professional dissenters’, who do not create ‘value’ by the business community at large. In fact, to invert the lens, they are intellectual entrepreneurs who are bringing their thoughts to life. An idea is undergirded by tangible resources to last a while. Activists are traditional organizations in a very corporate sense. The bottom line lies somewhere else, only the quarterly reporting format differs. Ask any fundraising manager for a non-profit the reality and he would be speaking the same lexicon as a corporate manager. Boot-strapping for scaling is the forte of an activist, working on scant resources, long before the term became cool in contemporary literature. Hiring the correct talent becomes as headache as cash is often in short supply unless it is an INGO such as the International Rescue Committee which can hire David Miliband as its CEO. There is no Series A Funding round for an activist, as the funding rounds are perennial.

All social movements need resources and are limited by the same variables which start-ups are limited. Non-profits need war rooms to coordinate efforts for large scale projects. ‘Blitz scaling’ as coined by Venture Capitalist Reid Hoffmann (HBR April 2016) is performed out by mobilizing the common spirit of the times. #FeeltheBern or the Sanders presidential campaign is classic example of reaching out to small donors and scaling a movement. A performing social movement like a political campaign for elected office, serves a purpose. Activism such as selling a product is also selling an idea. The idea becomes the basis of the product cycle. The campaign for the food security legislation in India took decades to be written in to law, but the ground work intellectually started many years back by activists such as Aruna Roy, Jean Dreaze and Amartya Sen.

Activism needs the same skill set as an entrepreneur as the buy in is needed. The product being a normative idea makes it a very challenging sell in comparison to a FMCG product. Let us have the humility and listen to these struggles as lessons to learn.

Lessons in Business from a Bottom up Urban Entrepreneur

The Food & Beverages Sector is the most segregated and stratified in the country as it ranges from the street corner fast food joint to a reasonable eatery to the ephemeral star hotels.  An eatery has severe quality control limitations as an authorised eatery will have to get about 70 odd registrations and licenses done to open one. The F&B sector is glamorous with the Michelin Star Chefs sexing it up. Anyway the contemporary business media discourse is about eulogizing and manufacturing the myth of the entrepreneur. This post is about recognizing the potential for bottom up entrepreneurship in the ‘R’uban space and unpacking the black box of what makes an entrepreneur tick! (a term coined and popularized by Iconic Singaporean Architect & Urban Planner Tay Kheng Soon and recently quoted by Prime Minister Modi in his first Parliamentary speech)

The protagonist of the narrative is a certain Mr. Shyam who runs his corner store eatery in Gurgaon’s upmarket residential neighborhood, where he cooks and sells every single dish which the costumer demands. Costumer is King for him. Whether it is catering lunch to the office goer in the next block or the student who comes in for the rather oily fried Indian Noodles for an evening snack.   23 year old Shyam looks like a teenager due to his youthful dressing sense and negligible facial hair. His corner shop tries to deploy a modicum  of a restaurant with the napkin, the silver foil container for takeaways, proper cutlery and outdoor cane chairs. Well, the family run store tries its best to attract quality crowd. Shyam once quipped that even if folks are not eating and simply sitting on the outdoor cane chairs, it will give a signal to the prospective buyer that the store has a clientele and hence shall infuse confidence aka validation in the store, that He/She may try out the place. 

Brilliant business insight from a guy who just studied till Grade 6. Education has nothing to do with ability. Smriti Irani will make a great Cabinet Minister. A degree from Harvard or an IIT does not make for a good Entrepreneur or a seasoned politico (read some Mr. Kejriwal). Shyam left his town in Northern part of West Bengal at the age of 14 for Bangalore where he worked in a restaurant and learnt the tricks of the trade. In a few years, he moved to Gurgaon to start his corner store and moved up the social ladder.

Fire in the belly and being open to learning fresh ideas is the key to entrepreneurship. Humility, Drive and Risk taking ability are the traits that have distinguished Shyam from others of his habitus.

Simple Folks, Massive Insights. Entrepreneurship is a transformative social elevator.

 

Be an ‘Intra-preneur’

I am not an Entrepreneur, but I like to learn from the tribe of risk-takers who have the ‘audacity of hope’. The zest for life, the killer instincts to close the deal and make things happen are attitudinal traits that every professional should have. Rainmaking and thinking ahead of the curve are pre-requisites for very knowledge worker in todays tumultuous economic climate. Most firms want their employees to bring in ‘work’, create opportunities where there is one.

In Anand Mahindra’s words, Entrepreneurship is a frame of mind. Have a vision and making heaven and earth move to realise it. It is not the scarcity of  capital which restricts people to venture out, it is simply that lack of guts, the tenacity of listening to criticism day in and out, but have the audacity to rough it out. It does not have to be your own business, it can be the division you run, the team you lead or simply proving your detractors in your family and colleagues the real world way:

Prove it. Just Do it.

Have the Entrepreneurial Spirit.  Make things happen. Be Outstanding. Fulfil your Calling.