Learning Journey to San Francisco is made of…
- Written by Henna Kaariainen
- Published in Archive, English
- Permalink
First day behind in this unique 1st Learning Journey to San Francisco we’ve been co-creating together with the Learning Journeys crew Liher, Kaisu and Bego Maite, and the Mondragon Team Academy community.
Who’s on board in here? It’s 2 Uni programs, BBA and Master from Mondragon Team Academy, and 4 pioneer participants of the 1st Learning Journey to SFO with their 2 coaches. All together we are about 40 experimenting the contemporary business context here thiw week.
Yesterday was an inspirational day and it already contained two or more chances to pitch the projects in front of the audience. First we landed in the Hub SoMa, where 10 Hub entrepreneurs were joining us talking their stories of playing in the US market. It was Adam Archer from GamesThatGive, wh said that a young company crew needs to have only 2 roles: ”you just need people who are building and selling”. Then there was Javier Ideami, who shared that possibility lurks around every corner, and you need t keep listening to the market carefully and adapt to it a bit, because if you don’t do so you will be forgotten. Also I remember Santiago from softonic.com talking about the importance of having the right people on board in the beginning. ”It’s a strategic esicion with whom you
work, and hiring great people needs great investment.” Later on, we had a session with Victoria Hale from medicines360.com, who had created a non-profit drug company and said that in the medical sciences field there are multiple areas where help is needed, but not given, due to the market powers. For example in USA 50 % of the pregnancies are unplanned, and contraceptive pills are not sold without meeting a doctor. There lurks a great change possibility, for example. Her rule of thumb was that business lurks in fields where no one else wants to go. And to go there, she has always been a serius person who came to do serious things. There were also more entrepreneurs from the Hub Ventures program wh were purifying water and building better sanitary solutions to India…quite inspirational in deed! In the evening we headed to the Summit Café, where MTA had invited some local entrepreneurs, and I met for exapmle Espen, an ex Kaospilot Team Leader, who now lives in San Francisco and builds interactive toys for facilitation purposes.
Espen comes to work with a cost of costs, and takes a persentage of sales and a patent of of a new creation, and so he’s affordable for all small and medium size businesses too. Shall we buy him in Monkey Business for a week or two? 😉 This banana-surfing monkey is his gift for us. Maybe it’s he himself?
Right now I have to go because MINN, my Master’s team, is about to start brainstorming and preparations for today’s meetings with BitTorrent, IDEO and Innvalley. I have to say that this program is an eye-opening, and brain-nurturing experience in many ways!! Yesterday we tried concreticizing what is MINN, and we are still around here:
MINN is a lively, constantly evolving executive learning journey at the service of creative processes, participatory and open environments.
It was set up to research and experience the interaction between the individual, company and community on a contemporary business context.
The value of MINN lies on a unique team for experimentation and promoting new cross-disciplinary formulae.
What do you think?
See you tonight with some new insights….
Yellow regards,
Henna
