Motivational Stories
Motivational story 1
8. Ability to share knowledge and ideas externally
8.1. The external environment and knowledge flows
(LEARNING FROM OTHER’S MISTAKES)
Mr. Jones is a recently retired economist. Exhausted of the life in the big city and willing to explore new activities, Mr. Jones decided to move to the countryside where he had inherited a house and some acres of land, and dedicate himself to farming. From research he found out about the high value of a specific type of orange and how successful farmers were with their plantations. Without no further thinking, he decided this was the perfect idea. He had all the required resources and started preparing for this new venture.
Living in this new place, Mr. Jones started making friendship and connecting with other farmers. While talking about his plans for his land and activity with one of his friends and peer, Mr. Simons, he learned something very valuable.
To the plans of Mr. Jones, Mr. Simons replied “Don’t do it, Jones, that will not work. Let me share something with you. That is actually a great idea, but you lose all your investment. I have heard about the success that orange breed, so I decided to experiment it. It was a big mistake. Our weather conditions, specific of this valley, are extremely averse to that type of plantation. I lost all the planted trees! But I’ll tell you which are the plantations you should invest in as they are very successful in our type of land and weather conditions…”
This ideas and knowledge sharing was of high value for Mr. Jones. It saved him from frustration, investment lost and direct him to investments that ended up being very profitable for him.
We all learn, also, from other people’s mistakes.
Image source: Photo by Gerd Altmann at https://pixabay.com/pt/illustrations/falso-pior-situa%c3%a7%c3%a3o-assinar-98375/
Motivational story 2
8. Ability to share knowledge and ideas externally
8.2. Channels and practices for knowledge and ideas exchange
(NEW IDEAS AROUND THE COFFEE VENDING MACHINE)
A young incubator hosted multiple start-ups and a couple of R&D centers from some bigger companies. The profile of the entrepreneurs was very diverse: from young university students turning their graduation projects into new business, to experienced entrepreneurs starting their own companies, team managers coordinating R&D teams. The sectors of the companies’ activities were also very diverse – from ICT to new materials, construction, engineering, robotics, etc.
At the incubator, each company had their own office and there was no coworking spaces. Considering the different schedules worked by the different entrepreneurs and employees and in order to allow them to have access to coffee, beverages, food and sweets while working, a special space was created with 2 vending machines. As entrepreneurs and employees would make short breaks for coffee, they would meet quite often in this area that, day by day, started to become an informal networking area were everyone would meet and talk with each other.
At the beginning, conversations were very casual – meeting each other, their interests, their start-ups field of operations, football, politics, world events and so on. But sooner the conversations starting evolving, also, around the entrepreneurial and business world. Quite often, entrepreneurs would share problems and would receive advice from more experienced entrepreneurs on how to deal with it, market developments and opportunities, recommendations between entrepreneurs on new customers opportunities and so on. A strong collaboration spirit was developed and each new entrepreneur arriving to the incubator would soon be welcome into the group.
As a result, some interesting inter-organizations collaborations started to be discussed.
An example comes from two entrepreneurs from 2 completely different sectors – ICT and construction. While discussing local problems, they come up with a solution of joining the two expertise’s to develop a new solution addressed to municipalities. A platform was developed with multiple functionalities – a first interface would allow citizens to communicate public spaces problems to be solved by the municipality, while a private are would present a sustainable and efficient solutions, in terms of construction intervention, to be applied. The two functionalities were complemented with an internal management system to the municipality. The project was, soon, presented to the local municipality that within a short time bought the solution to the consortium created by the two entrepreneurs for the solution development.
Image source: Photo by StockSnap at https://pixabay.com/pt/photos/pessoas-homem-mulher-garota-cara-2557451/