Global Entrepreneurship Lab 2012

Innovation to combat limited resources

It was another working day. Everyday we are busy, as we have daily update meetings with the CEO. We met the Head of Value-Added Services of the biggest telecom services company (Ssafari Com) in Kenya during one of the networking events, and he invited us to visit his office and have a chat with us. It was a great experience to go to the office of a real company (not a start-up). Their campus is really nice, much nicer than average Kenyan office buildings. 

It was great chatting with him, and he told us a lot of things about the innovative initiatives they are having in the company. You can’t believe how much innovation there is within Africa. Nothing other parts of the developing world can compare to….Initially I thought they are just aiming at satisfying the basic needs and come up with basic services, but indeed, they all have very innovative ideas, and trying to solve the problem of limited resources. For example, they use a lot of mobile money. As most people don’t have computer or internet or credit card, so you can basically use the airtime on your phone to pay. And also, Safaricom manufactures its own computer. It only costs you $50 for a keyboard – and then you can put your SIM Card inside (with data plan), and connect to the TV as computer!! So innovative! 

 

Thank you and Happy New Year

It was early evening on a Saturday in which we couldn’t avoid going to the office to work. We have had an encouraging meeting with the CEO and project team, however we really needed one of those brainstorming/ work planning session to make sure everything was in place for our final delivery four days later. After an afternoon of hard work coming up with a layout of what we were going to present Antonio said something that really caught my attention. He stared at one particular slide for a while and said: “wow, this is a great way to say exactly what they want to hear”.

Some background. Antonio is a pretty successful Venezuelan entrepreneur who have had very limited experience in corporate setting. Therefore his knowledge of the type of work that strategy consultants do is next to zero. I, on the other hand, have worked on consulting projects for a bit, and then have been a customer to various consultancies. So for me the phrase really struck a nerve. I am no stranger to the thought that consultants find estimates and develop elaborate, great-looking slides to conclude what executives already knew they needed to do. Don’t get me wrong, I do value some forms of strategic consultants and that is why I wanted our team to strive for more.

Day 16: Foreigners (Americans) are jacking up prices everywhere!

The one with the kiss

It’s been a whirlwind trip with travels to Lima, Cusco, Machupichu, and to Lake Titicaca with its floating islands and alien encounter stories. Now I am in Buenos Aires at the GLAB client site and it’s been an interesting first week. The project scope was modified from enabling the client hire A players in Silicon Valley to helping them build their credibility and visibility in the valley before setting out for hiring. What was a HR project morphed into a marketing project!

Up to a great start… and almost done!

Pretty unbelievable, it’s been two weeks already and the countdown is now against us to finish up the project on time and deliver some strong recommendation. I realize I haven’t commented much on our company GMC since I started blogging so here are a few pointers on the company, what we are learning and the preparation for a strong finish.

Eating in China: The Myth the Truth and the Odd

As I prepared to come to China I did my due diligence by consulting most of the people I know that have been here before. Many had mixed feelings about China’s impressive mix of cultural ancestral heritage with western-like modernization. However, almost all of them advised unequivocally: watch out for the food. They spoke about the risk of low sanitary condition, shady unreliable restaurants and strange animals (including worms and insects) that tend to appear cooked in your plate without you asking. Some even suggested I stack up on granola bars because my disgust would make me very hungry.

Having spent a few weeks here I cannot disagree more with those comments.

Build Virtual City in Africa!

We are so excited that we finally will go to Africa for the project! Virtual City is our client based in Kenya. They do mobile applications. They would like to have G-Lab team to help them develop market entry strategy in other new markets in Africa. For most of us, we have never been to Africa, thus it is definitely a great 

We have been working during the past 2 months, building a market scanning scorecard to help Virtual City scan through 50 African markets. Not only we have built up a much stronger knowledge on various African markets, we all become very passionate in Africa's bright future as well. 

We look forward to traveling to Kenya and meet the team there!

 

No Looking Back!

According to the pilot my United Airlines flight will take exactly 13 hours and 25 minutes to take me from Washington DC to Beijing. Since I spent the last few weeks juggling between getting G-Lab work ready for the trip and keeping my Family (visiting Boston from Venezuela) entertained it only seemed fitting that I use this time for my first blog post.

I am encouraged to tell the story about our experience through this blogs. I look forward to writing as much as I can and I certainly hope it will be entertaining to some. And, as the beginning of any story, context is the most important piece.

New Zealand Bound

My name is Ben B, and I am currently an MBA student at MIT-Sloan. Right now, I am preparing for my long trip overseas to New Zealand. I am one of four team members who have been working with an energy efficiency company in Auckland, NZ, which specializes in intelligent hot water controllers. We are helping them find a new market for them to enter.

This past semester we spent our time narrowing down a list of more than 200 markets around the world to just one that we are recommending for them. Once we get our “boots on the ground” in New Zealand, we will be working with senior management to come up with a detailed entry strategy for that market.

The one with the Icing on the cake. The epic journey begins!

It's 9 pm in New York JFK; flights are taking off and landing raucously as I pen this piece.  Cheerful holiday music is playing through the public address system and the passengers and airport staff can be seen hustling about in christmasy attire. 

Five hours ago I had faced a challenging problem. How does one pack for a 45 day road trip across 3 countries, 4 climate zones without overpacking yet ensuring that there are enough clothes to avoid embarrassment at the client site? You might think that this is a question straight out of an MIT problem set. But no! This is the one of the many interesting and sometimes offbeat challenges posed by the GLAB experience!