3 minute read
Teacher ’ s article
Ivanna Lajaraa
Subjects: Small Business and Family Business Management, Leadership in Global Institutions.
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Teaching profile
Researcher, teacher, and entrepreneur. In 2015, I founded the Meraki Institute for Happiness at Work and have worked with more than 80 organizations in the Dominican Republic and the USA. Founder of the social project Cuando Sea Grande. After traveling to the Nordic countries for research, in 2020, last year I co-produced the first happiness docuseries in Spanish with #LaGranPregunta. I'm currently producing a documentary on happiness and longevity. I've co-founded the employment platform Waojobs.com and the virtual assistant platform holagenia.com. Since 2016 I'm a faculty member at UNIBE's dual degree program. I'm currently, a Ph.D. student in Change Leadership, at Western Michigan University.
what are you going to build?
People believe becoming an entrepreneur or starting a business is about having a good idea. “Good ideas are contagious, ” a student wrote. But they are roughly just a piece of the entrepreneurship pie. A successful business relies on the grit, commitment, discipline, and vision of its founder, more than it does on its ideas.
Let’ s travel to a region in Northern California, United States, known as the global epicenter for high technology, entrepreneurship, and innovation. A place I visited a few months ago, where my friend, co-author, fellow Dominican, and serial tech entrepreneur, Paola Santana, lives and leads her businesses. The place is Silicon Valley and the term I want you to remember and engrave in your hearts and minds is: “Moonshots ” . 43
Moonshots get their name from our aim to accomplish impossible things for the betterment of humanity. In Silicon Valley, they define them as innovative and future-forward ideas that are very hard to accomplish or even explain, with an unclear implementation path, and with unknown chances of success.
What really matters in this entrepreneurial ecosystem is what you have actually done or built, or what you ’ re willing to build, with the knowledge and resources you can muster.
The grit of Silicon Valley founders is unparalleled and the results of their commitment to the Moonshots they ’ re forwarding has changed the lives of millions around the world. The cellphone you're holding in your hand, the router that provides your phone with wifi, the platforms through which you watch series and movies, the fact that you can take at-home DNA tests, among others… All of this is possible thanks to those founders.
There are practical business tools to work through your big idea and transform it into an entrepreneurial endeavor; some of these include the Lean Canvas, the Unique Value Proposition, the exploration and use of Exponential Technologies, and your Minimum Viable Product. However, there are deeper and transformational questions that entrepreneurs and founders in the Valley ask themselves, and here I will share three:
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This last concept is a constant in innovative business ideas and Moonshots that transform the world. Disruption is a radical change to an existing industry or market due to technological innovation, and he sees a world where, thanks to digitization, technology is more accessible and affordable, so anyone can build anything.
What’s Going To Change In The World Because You Exist? What’s The One Thing that will Differentiate Your Moonshot? What Part of People’s Lives are You Aspiring to Disrupt?
