The further is it to us, the more we learn from it

In last week's post, I introduced my work on “connecting the dots”:

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Lessons from startups in emerging markets - from Meike Netz

Focused on the current economic uncertainty, Meike identifies resilience as one of the qualities to sustain growth as a startup.
The author adds “Resilience is something that startups from emerging markets can teach their Europeans counterparts”.

The resilience of startups is explained due to numerous factors found in emerging markets :

• The scarcity of funds from Venture Capitalists

  → Startups learn not to depend on it.

• The necessity to address basic human needs first

  → Startups address markets with large customer pools.

• The culture of doing more with less

  → Due to the lack of stability, startups learn to leverage all available resources.

• The infrastructure context

  → Startups are often pioneers in their sector and learn to build their own clusters.

• The short sprint mindset

  → With almost no margin of error, startups learn to make the right choices fast.

• The freemium taboo & the profitability focus

  → With limited funds, startups focus on providing necessary & paid products.

Obviously, startup ecosystems have differences, nevertheless, they can act as inspiration for each other in specific market conditions (growth, recession, etc).

In the current economic context, Meike highlights “Startups from emerging markets can teach us - it is possible to make it through rough weather”.
With their resilience capacity, they have a better chance to survive and this is why they can serve as an inspiration.

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Survival mode and success - from Jun & Yu-Kai

Jun & Yu-Kai addressed the survival mode mindset and its relation with success.
Yu-Kai, a thought leader on gamification states: “Dopamine is the neuro-molecule that fuels our motivation, which acts as the driver for us to achieve things”.

Both of the speakers agree that “Doing and achieving hard things is what builds a feeling of competency and confidence”.

Doing hard things might require us to adopt a “change of mentality”, for example associating specific pains with a positive consequence, Jun & Yu-Kai give hunger and tiredness as examples:

“Hunger may be the opportunity to burn the excess fat”.

“Tiredness may be the opportunity to build strength”.

“Hunger” is continuously addressed in the conversation between Jun & Yu-Kai.
For them, its feeling is necessary to achieve things, but our current environment, with abundant resources, stops us from adopting this “change of mentality”.

For individuals and organizations like startups (mentioned in Meike’s article), a change of mentality could lead to success, and starvation may help with that.

As Steve Jobs said “Stay hungry, stay foolish”

And there, is where the dots connect!

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