Female entrepreneurs

Teresa Alarcos

• Publisher: Plataforma
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9788418927478
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

"We promote the existence of more women in the entrepreneurial world and this book written by Teresa is groundbreaking and timely."HANNAH F. BUCHAN, Hunter Global Investors L.P."When female entrepreneurial talent is abundant, but success stories are so few that it begs the question of where the ecosystem is failing. […] This book provides an important vision of the critical aspects of digital entrepreneurship."PILAR MANCHÓN, Sr. Director, Artificial Intelligence Google, Silicon Valley"The patience and constant resistance with which women have endured the macho structure of society for so long is admirable. Teresa Alarcos has written a good book full of interest on how the new digital society can correct this discrimination forever. I advise reading it urgently and with respect."ANTONIO GARRIGUES WALKER, Honorary president of Garrigues"This book will inspire us and will motivate more and more of us to create a legacy that we will be proud to leave our children."CHRISTINA GERAKITEYS, Co-CEO SingularityU Australia"Teresa Alarcos has written a very successful book from the heart, in which she shows in a solid and didactic way how a startup is created."ANTONIO COLINO, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering"Teresa's book highlights bold and confident female entrepreneurs who are paving the way for others. By leveraging their knowledge and networks, these entrepreneurs are identifying opportunities, understanding potential clients and following their passion to do good. These women are true game changers."ANI L. KHARAJIAN, Senior Portfolio Director, Executive Education, Harvard Business School President, Board of Directors, Armenian International Women's Association

1. What's happening in the world?... Singular trends. Conquering the galaxy and the stars so that there is a planet B!

We live in a world in which, for the first time ever, we have an interplanetary view of human history, broader than just the geopolitical perspective of the past.

Elon Musk once said about space travel, “There’s a fundamental difference, if you look into the future, between a humanity that is a space-faring civilization, that’s out there exploring the stars … compared with one where we are forever confined to Earth until some eventual extinction event.” Apparently, we start to need Wonder Woman to come and save humanity.

A NASA robot has landed on Mars. India launches its first space mission to the Moon. Japan and Europe launch an interplanetary mission to land on Mercury. China lands its Chang’e-4 Lander on the dark side of the Moon. XPRIZE, the enterprise founded and chaired by Peter Diamandis and sponsored by Facebook, Google, Oracle, Salesforce, Microsoft, have launched The Great Space Race for the first time in history. It’s a private commercial mission for Moon exploration. In science and medicine, clinical trials have started for the first type 1 diabetes vaccine. Robots perform complex surgical operations more accurately than humans. The contraceptive pill for men appeared in 2018, poliomyelitis has been eradicated worldwide. Anti-aging therapies are being tested in humans to prolong healthy lives. Thanks to algorithms and systematized information, a robot diagnoses a lung carcinoma more accurately than humans. Another current example that uses machine learning and AI technologies is the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, developed in only two months.

The world population will soon exceed 7.7 billion inhabitants, and it will reach 9.7 in 2050. The price of a bitcoin is hovering at USD 60,000 dollars. Electric vehicles have reached sales of 5,200,000 units; one in twenty people communicate via hotspot Wi-Fi, and videos represent 84 percent of the Internet traffic.

In this new context of constant change, one of the emerging topics in all the surveys of company directors carried out by consultants is the little time dedicated to talking about strategy at the board meetings. The last PwC report on boards of directors of 2020 listed companies showed that 60 percent of the renewal of directors is not in line with the speed of change in society and the market. Despite great efforts, the existing inertias are too complex to change.

Talent management issues also emerge as protagonists. I remember in several master classes Professor Bower, from Harvard Business School, mentioned the phrase, overused but true, “management is people” when talking about the CEO role. What matters is people and having an innovative mindset. A striking example is the DBS Bank Singapore, where they created a startup environment of 26,000 innovative employees, transforming the banking business.

To grow our business, we must feed it in all the aspects necessary to create a friendly environment to stay up to date on skills, knowledge and, consequently, employability. Richard Branson wants all his employees to be employable and proposes a culture where those who are really happy stay and transfer that value of happiness to customers, creating a virtuous circle. Other issues of concern to all managers of organizations, and particularly to directors, are related to cyber security, the technological risks, and the management of succession.

We have started to live differently, and it has become increasingly complex to reach the deep and detailed knowledge of a subject. We must orient ourselves and learn to make decisions in uncertain environments and learn to live with a high degree of tolerance for ambiguity. In the face of complex problems, a diversity of angles must prevail to find the best solutions.

2. Modalities of strategy

The current non-delegable power of the board to approve strategy has evolved throughout history.

• The Traditional Strategy: Teams have the ability to innovate in terms of products and services. They put the products or services on the market to showcase to their customers, who may or may not be interested.
• The Digital Strategy: The Digital Strategy involves omnichannel systems, meaning multiple channels are used to reach the customers in order to deliver a satisfactory experience at any time and at any opportunity. Banks and utilities, insurance companies and a plethora of other industries are immersed in this first phase of e-commerce and e-marketing.
• The Ecosystem Model Strategy: The growth strategy in a business ecosystem model involves a market growth in which you compete by adding adjacent markets or by entering new markets through the cooperating companies themselves. This model of coopetence (a mix of the concepts of cooperation and competition, cooperating in certain matters and competing in others) has been launched by flagship companies like Ferrovial and Facebook. Apple launched its watch in an alliance with Nike (combining three traditional industries: sport, health, and technology) and Colgate joined AI in the Apple Store.
  We can’t forget the concept of the moonshot, which dates back to Kennedy’s presidency of the United States. When Kennedy got to the White House, his strategic plan included an unprecedented milestone, reaching the Moon and exploring space. That was his moonshot and he did it.
  In his speech, Kennedy talk about an ambitious space exploration program which included missions with astronauts, satellite missions to monitor the weather, a nuclear rocket, and space projects in zero gravity. On May 25, 1961, prior to a session of the Congress of the United States, President John F. Kennedy gave a historic speech on the conquest of the Moon.
  Today moonshot is used in management to identify disruptive parameters that can take your business from linear to exponential and allow it to multiply by the power of ten.

How does a business turn a moonshot into a reality? By defining and concretizing that moonshot into the organization, using digital exponential technologies to solve problems and find different and more efficient solutions. This can be done by:

1. Looking at adjacent businesses. Through partnering, Apple launched Apple Watch in alliance with Nike, targeting the rising value of the wellness movement through big data and technology.
2. Looking for and identifying efficiencies in the supply chain. Innovative technologies and efficiencies must be crossed to get to automation v gr. Robotics applied industrially but also in medicine. An example of robotics applied to medicine is Elena García, designer of the exoskeletons for Children in her startup MarsiBionics.
3. Attacking the most relevant friction point in the relationship with the customer and turning customer dissatisfaction into a great opportunity v.gr Airb&b versus traditional hotels chain resources.

Exponential boards must address these strategic issues on a frequent basis, asking many questions and identifying where the moonshots are in their industries. We are going to live in a hyper-connected world where soon the 4 billion people that are not yet connected to the Internet will become connected via 5G technology.

5G will create a network of billions of people interacting and thinking simultaneously, creating a world of abundant knowledge that can then be applied thanks to emerging technologies. We are going to create a more just world, in which full and universal access to education and health services will not only be possible but will be our reality.

3. Strategies in exponential moments

Professor John Hagel III is a Management Consultant, Trusted Advisor, Inspirational Speaker, Author and Singularity Expert in Corporate Innovation. Hagel believes we are living in an environment of mountain pressure and classifies this into three categories:

1. Individual Pressure

In five years, there will be a million people capable of doing your job. In addition, there will be a million robots capable of doing it. This prospect stirs us emotionally and we must consider the things people do that robot do not. At least in the short term.

A social problem has emerged that we must solve. We need to anticipate potential conflict and turn it into opportunity. Work that can be automated should be delegated to machines, allowing humans to focus on what is inherent in our nature; empathy, critical sense, a capacity to create new solutions and creativity.

2. Institutional Pressure

Barriers to entry are increasingly limited and barriers among industries are narrowing and dissolving. There’s the overused example of Google in their capacity as makers of autonomous vehicles. Through open innovation processes, infrastructure industries like Ferrovial are approaching the automotive industry and the insurance industry amongst others, to develop improved customer experiences.

3. Connectivity Pressure

Any isolated event transcends globally in milliseconds, except for those areas where there is limited or no freedom. There are still four billion people who are not connected to the internet, who, thanks to 5G technology and the satellite companies that will connect the globe, will soon be able to access shared knowledge. This opportunity will continue to grow exponentially.

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There is simply no choice. Today it is imperative to consider the pressure environments, the mountain pressure, as a board’s KPIs.

Boards must now redefine strategy. When we talk about redefining strategy, we talk about two scenarios that Professor Hagel refers to as zoom in and zoom out.

Zoom In

This process requires the selection of two or three projects that would increase the acceleration of the company. A board must ask the executive:

1. Do we have enough resources?
2. What would be the impact on the cost structure?
3. What would be the impact on income?
4. How will we measure success?
5. What are we going to learn?
6. How will we monitor, potentiate and abandon strategies if they do not work, and gather the learnings?
7. How will we manage living in constant uncertainty?

Zoom out

This is a visionary way of thinking. Zoom out focuses on a ten-to-thirty-year time frame.

After the boom of the cell phone in the 1990’s, Microsoft decided to exclude it as a priority in its strategic plan. Who would have thought that cell phone calls, with a much higher price, would replace landline calls?

Or consider Kodak who had the technology to produce digital cameras yet didn’t know how to implement a cultural change strategy to launch them before other incoming startups.

Sometimes companies are shortsighted. Organizations should carry out this Zoom Out exercise constantly, with a deep critical and constructive spirit, and with an external focus on customer habits. Microsoft learned the lesson, and Satya Nadella, its president, has managed to find the moonshot, betting on cloud services, augmented reality and other technologies. In 2018, Kodak tripled its value by joining the bandwagon of cryptocurrencies and creating a platform to exchange copyrights and photographs. This system, called KODAKOne, allows the tracking of royalties and uses a cryptocurrency, the KODAKCoin, which is managed through the blockchain.

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We must rethink innovation and put our products and services quickly on the market, without delaying for perfect processes. We have the concepts of scalability and efficiency versus scalability and learning. If we want a company culture based on innovation, we need to dispense with efficiency. And, if we want security and processes, we will dispense with innovation. As board members, we have to ask ourselves questions and make right decisions. What company culture do we want? A culture where failure is accepted? A c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Reviews
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Foreword by Antonio Huertas
• 1. What’s happening in the world? Singular trends. Conquering the galaxy and the stars so that there is a planet B!
• 2. Modalities of strategy
• 3. Strategies in exponential moments
• 4. What happened in our companies in recent years?
• 5. Who are we, the women entrepreneurs?
• 6. What are women digital entrepreneurs like?
• 7. Team: choose the crew
• 8. Choose the vessel: sailing ship or motor ship?
• 9. Who is John?
• 10. When the ship sinks. Swim or drown?
• 11. The culture of failure: learnings from a wreck
• 12. Being in community, making a difference. On the same boat
• 13. SDGs and disruptive technologies
• 14. Women that change the world. SDGs in person
• 15. Women: past and future
• Glossary
• Notes
• Colophon