We are particularly proud to announce that Ben Casnocha is joining us as a speaker on the occasion of the 9th Synetgies event.

Drawing on his own experiences as entrepreneur and the ones he gathered in writing his book, Ben will discuss what it means to think entrepreneurially in all contexts, not just in the process of starting a business. He will present a series of ideas, facts, and provocative opinions around the entrepreneurial mentality, and then facilitate a discussion as well as the usual interactive Q&A session.

Ben Casnocha is a Silicon Valley ­based entrepreneur and author. Currently twenty years old, he serves on the board of Comcate, Inc., the leading e-government technology firm he founded six years ago. He has received various accolades. In 2006 BusinessWeek named him one of America’s best young entrepreneurs. In 2004 PoliticsOnline ranked him among the “twenty-five most influential people in the world of Internet and politics.” The Silicon Valley Business Journal named his blog one of the “Top 25 in Silicon Valley.” His work has been featured in hundreds of media around the world, including CNN and USA Today. He’s a commentator for public radio’s “Marketplace”. He is a seasoned speaker on entrepreneurship and leadership, and he cofounded an intellectual discussion society for business and technology executives.

These 9th Synetgies event will take place on the
Date: 19.05.2008 at 19h15
At: ETHZ (Zürich) - HG E 33.3

Please apply through our Facebook-Event or by e-mail at team@synetgies.org.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Popularity: 41% [?]

We are happy to share with you a message from the organizing team behind the START Summit 2008. Please note that the conference language is German.

Dear Synetgizers

Your START Summit Team

Popularity: 68% [?]

Marius Köstler (HSG) will talk about social entrepreneurship and the design of business models for highly corrupt environments. His presentation will be based on research as well as his experience as volunteer at Fontes Foundation (http://www.fontes.no). Marius will complete his five month journey to Uganda just one week before the Synetgies event. He has gained some experience by raising funds, planning and installing two self-supporting water supply systems as well as bargaining with the corresponding communities. Furthermore Marius has helped to build a school in Uganda.

Application can be found at our amiando page.

Popularity: 80% [?]

by Andreas Brenner, November 28th, Hong Kong

Entering the room at the main building of the University of Hong Kong (HKU), Dr. Jane Goodall raised interest of many school children of international schools who seemed to be engaged in her project “Roots and Shoots“. The slightly built woman got invited to the stage by the dean of the faculty of social sciences and immediately started talking in a calm and friendly voice:

Giving the audience a very brief overview of her recent engagements, she started her presentation with greeting the audience in “chimpanzeeish”, or as she would probably prefer to express it: Had this sound have been invented by a human, would it’ve been called “hello”. This way of expressing her observations is what, as she claimed, had enabled her to start and was a key success factor during her scientific career. She participated in a PhD program without having any prior academic experience. Until this point of time she had only been giving chimpanzees names and had been describing in her own words what she had seen. Since chimpanzees showed very human-like behaviours and capabilities, the definition of human had to be re-thought. It was not believed that animals could have emotions and as Dr. Goodall states, at this time it was not known that:

• chimpanzee DNA differs only one percent from the human DNA
• chimpanzees have the same immune system as humans and can therefore receive and distribute all human infectious diseases
• the anatomies of chimpanzee and human brains are almost identical
• blood transfers from chimpanzees to humans is possible if they have the same blood group

What’s the story behind this “living legend”?

Being born into a poor family in London just before the Second World War, the young Jane Goodall was dreaming of living like Tarzan in the jungle. She said that the most important thing her “wonderful mother” had taught her, was that if one really wants to reach any goal, then one’d had to:

• Really want something
• Take advantage of opportunities
• Work hard
• Dream

You have to really want something

Since she was young, her mother had provided her with books about animals. Moving from the city of London to a farm, Jane, for the first time in her life, got in contact with real animals. At the age of four the wanted to explore the origin of the eggs and after several fails, finally hid from the hens in the stall in order to observe them. From that point of time, she says, she wanted to live with animals. The story of Tarzan and Jane was it, what set the course for her to become one of the first to examine chimpanzee lifes. Ever since she deeply wanted to live in the jungle.

You have to take advantage of opportunities

As Jane’s friend’s family moved to Kenya, Jane got invited and wanted to take advantage of this opportunity. Due to a lack of financial resources she had to take on a job as a waitress and save the tip to finance the trip. Finally having arrived in Africa she got to know her later mentor Louis Leakey, who hired her and let her fulfill her childhood dream of living with chimpanzees, which, at this time, was an uncommon job for females to do. She had no prior experience and therefore just noted what she saw and how she perceived it - probably the reason for why the meaning of the word human had to be redefined.

You have to work hard

Jane worked at a a family hotel where she made “sure, that by the end of the week everyone would know that [she] was saving [her] tip for a trip to Africa in order to get a higher tip or to get a tip at all.” Later on she had to fight for the funding of her first research project and found herself in a situation that sounded similar to the one of truly innovative startups looking for venture capital: She had no experience, was too young to have any credibility and had an idea to do something that nobody had ever done before and most people considered to be absurd. But, most importantly: She got the money and only half a year later she got backed by National Geographic. As one can guess from her current reputation, she was right and the early investors took the right decision in financing the young Jane. Until today (her 73rd and her foundations’ 30th year of existence), she keeps travelling in her function as embassador of Roots and Shoots, as UN embassador for peace and as a researcher.

You have to dream

Since being a child, Dr. Jane Goodall had the dream of once living with the animals in the jungle. She kept dreaming and her dream has evolved to a vision of every species of life living in a balanced world, where humans do take care of the environment and do not fight wars. She dreams of everyone taking action with the means he or she’s got and in the field of action that suits him or her best. According to Jane, when dreaming it is most important to share the dream, work hard to realize it and keep an open eye on opportunities that arise in one’s environment.

Dr. Jane Goodall ended her presentation by asking herself and answering one of the most important question people have raised in the past:

Jane, considering the mess in today’s environment, do you still hope?

And she wouldn’t be called an entrepreneur if she didn’t keep on hoping (or shall I say dreaming?) for the following four reasons:

• The tremendous enthusiasm of young people
• The evolution of the extraordinary human brain with intellectual capabilities that enable us to realize the mess
• The human capacity to forgive
• The amount of passionate and dedicated people that surround her

Her final call went out to everyone to take action in whatever way he or she could, be it in the framework of her organization roots and shoots, by supporting any other organization or by just taking action for the sake of making the world a better place.

Further information about the story of Jane Goodall can be found at:

• www.janegoodall.org
• Wikipedia article about Jane Goodall
• www.rootsandshoots.org

Andreas Brenner ist currently completing his bachelor degree in general business administration at the University of St. Gallen (HSG) by spending one semester abroad at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is a co-founder of Synetgies.

Popularity: 100% [?]

This is the first part, the full speech (click here) can be seen at Youtube.

Popularity: 73% [?]

by Christian Emigholz, November 16th, Leipzig

Spreadshirt is often considered to be a reference for building up a company. Its history provides an example for many uprising (potential) entrepreneurs. Its company culture is said to reflect the spirit of an inspiring start-up (a reason for me to come here). The entrepreneurial spirit seems to belong to Spreadshirt like the ‘Amen’ to the church.

Regarding its five years of existence, the market entries of several competitors and a total number of 250 employees (150 in the HQ in Leipzig), one might wonder whether Spreadshirt could maintain an “entrepreneur’s spark” in their employees – a willingness to undertake a venture and to achieve through taking risk, improvising by following a vision.

The answer? - Well, they try to.

The theory: Core values of Spreadshirt’s company culture

The entrepreneurial Spirit is fostered (if not ‘spread’) among the employees through one of Spreadshirt’s core values. Such a value (there are six in total) reflects the “typical” Spreadshirt culture and shall be internalised by each employee. Each new employee has to attend a so-called “cultural onboarding” where Lukasz (founder of Spreadshirt) introduces these values.

At the last general assembly (a monthly held employee meeting) the relevant core value of this article was addressed: “think smart, move fast”. This value is about lighting the entrepreneurial fire in every employee. The following statements specify what thinking smart and moving fast should mean to the Spreadshirt employee

• behave as if you were the owner
• apply common sense, not rules
• structure is the servant not the master

Spreadshirt wants its employees to think out of the box. They shall not simply follow procedures and given tasks. They shall question, dare to do differently and improve the given. The employees are not only responsible for the output, they provide input to the organisation.
The rationale behind is the learning organisation. Spreadshirt operates in a fast-changing (web-) environment, where the ability to adapt to new circumstances is the crucial factor that decides about success and failure: “Be quick or dead” was the concluding phrase in the general assembly.

The practice: Entrepreneurship among employees at Spreadshirt

The employees can be regarded as the working hands of their department manager. Employees are quite self-dependant in working-style, work location and the way tasks are carried out. Nonetheless, if problems and questions occur, the informal culture allows it to let the employees give feedback (and proposals) to their managers. Employees thereby avoid a risk of failure and let their managers know where change and innovation is needed. Possible solutions are then discussed (complicated process) and eventually taken into practice (a long list of proposals still wait for implementation at Spreadshirt’s IT). Nowadays it’s more of an innovation process, than it is entrepreneurial spirit that changes Spreadshirt or that determines its future actions.

The above-mentioned explaining statements for think smart, move fast show the natural trade-off: More structure means less entrepreneurial spirit. The more employees an organisation has to coordinate, the more necessary structures become. If employees change the structures of their working environment by “being entrepreneurial” they endanger the proper functioning of the whole organisation.

Thinking smart and moving fast shall in fact encourage employees to generate ideas on how to do things better. The big difference between a young start-up and an adolescent company is how these ideas are taken into practice. The individuals of a start-up necessarily implement their ideas more or less straight away. Often no best practice exists and nobody can be asked. As structures, processes and hierarchies are set up, employees (can) rely on their managers and profit from the organisation’s past experiences.

In my opinion the adolescent Spreadshirt can’t be called “entrepreneurial” anymore. I consider “controlled innovation” a much more appropriate description.

An additional note: As more employees enter a growing company, the likeliness to employ only individuals with an entrepreneurial attitude diminishes. Creating (!) an entrepreneurial spirit can’t be achieved through something that will often only remain a phrase: think smart, move fast.

After studying general business administration at the University of St. Gallen (HSG), Christian is currently taking an internship at Spreadshirt in Leipzig. Before eventually running his own business in the future, he wants to learn from others who have overcome the peaks and problems an own venture faces.

Popularity: 66% [?]