2) Personal Intrinsic Programs

The lines of code that define your inner functioning: your “intrinsic programs”

Lines of codes that define you as the person you are.

Towards-----------------------Away from

 Towards versus away from person; towards tend to achieve goals, move away tends to avoid
situations.
 An example for "towards" could be: "I want to be free and make my own decisions," vs "away
from": "I never want to have a boss that tells me what to do."
 Identify whether you are a towards or away from
 It’s okay to be either
 How to identify: Towards" people tend to integrate in their vocabulary words like: "our aim..."
or "what we want to achieve..." while "move away from" individuals use words like: "what we
want to avoid..." or "we want to make sure that we do not..."

Should identify the type of people and then deal accordingly.

Options--------------------------Procedures

 Options person: multiple options

 Procedures person: predefined sets of options
 How do you identify them? You will find "options" people use expressions like: "we have several
possibilities here," or "the choice we have to make is..." while "procedures" people will use
expressions like: "the process is..." or "the system we have to put in place is..."

Identify the type and then deal accordingly (Give options to options and 2, 3 processes to procedures

In time---------------------Through time

 In time people get so absorbed that they forget about time (Ending meetings late) Highly
indulged
 Through time people follow time strictly but are less indulged in time

Identify type and deal accordingly

Detail----------------------Global

 Detail people don’t move forward until fully clear with each and every detail
 Global people tend to keep the big picture in mind
 Can you think of a time when you missed a small detail in a project and it impacted your results
in a major way? Your answer can be Yes or No

In any kind of team, a mixture of the two types is better.

Feeling--------------------Thinking
Must have a mixture in teams

All these intrinsic programs are in a spectrum as no one can be absolute.

ACTIVITY: Now is a good time to do two things: first, try to position yourself on the spectrum for each of
the five examples we reviewed. Second, think of other intrinsic programs that I did not mention. Try to
think of at least two other intrinsic programs.

Choosing entrepreneurship compared to your other options: The Cash Flow Quadrant

 Robert Kiyosaki’s "Cash Flow Quadrant" for career options (BOOK)

 Entrepreneur: Business owner: As a Business Owner, you own what we call a "System", and
people work for you. As a consequence, money also works for you, but just like an investor, you
will only know in the end if your system created or destroyed money for you. This notion of
owning a "System" is a very good representation of one of the goals of entrepreneurship, which
is to create a business that becomes less and less reliant on you, and at some point, runs by
itself.
 Real life Stories of choosing entrepreneurship over job

The life choice of entrepreneurship: identifying the trade-offs

 entrepreneurship is much more than an intellectual choice. It is also a life choice with specific
pros and cons that you have to consider before making your decision.
 Cos: No start end time, if you follow your passion everyone you meet will challenge your project
and give you advice, an opinion, a suggestion. On the contrary, if you work at L'Oréal, for
instance, it is less likely that people you meet will challenge your company's positioning or
business model.
 Entrepreneurship is about freedom but not all fancy and smooth
 Remember that knowing which intrinsic programs you follow will be a great tool to overcome
the inherent challenges of entrepreneurship.
 Knowing yourself better will help you make these decisions easier.
 Dissociating yourself from your project (Not being obsessed) Should you? People think you
should, I don’t
 Real life stories

Understanding your belief system

 As Winston Churchill once said: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of
enthusiasm". In order to achieve this, you will need to consolidate a strong, resilient belief
system. I define a belief system as a set of beliefs, conscious or unconscious, that shape you.
 Your beliefs are based on your life experiences or more precisely, on the interpretation you
made of your past experiences.
 A belief has nothing to do with something being true or false. It is simply something you have
chosen to believe in and that would structure your decisions.
 Two types: Empowering and limiting beliefs (self-fulfilling prophecy)
 The key to prepare you for your entrepreneurial journey is to: 1) Make a detailed list of your
beliefs 2) Identify on the one hand your "empowering beliefs" and on the other hand your
 "limiting beliefs". 3) If need be, adopt new "empowering beliefs" that will help you cross the
hurdles that will inevitably stand in your way.
 Identify limiting beliefs and work on them. Tough task to dig these.
 do not forget that your "empowering beliefs" are all based on our intimate life experiences
which are the pillars of those beliefs.

MODULE/WEEK 2

Now we are assuming that you have decided to be an entrepreneur. It is time now to think of an
idea.

For that I invite you to use the "Three Questions Process" described by Tal Ben Shahar. There are
basically three things you want to consider when creating your company: First, you want to
remember your purpose in life: what gives you meaning, what provides you with a sense of
purpose? Secondly, you also want to take into account pleasure: what gives you pleasure, what do
you enjoy doing? Finally, you want to consider your strengths: What are your strengths, what are
you good at? You can find an idea for your company at the intersection of those three circles.

EXERCISE: Think of these

The intersection provides a development zone not the idea itself. For the idea ask yourself questions
like:

 Is there any way you can improve on something familiar? Have you seen anything abroad
that would be useful for your life? Have you thought of a better way of delivering or
producing something that already exists?
 three pillars of your business: the market, the customers, and the potential or existing
competition
 Market research helps in this phase

Henry Ford, for instance, once said: "if I had asked the customers what they wanted, they would have
said a faster horse"

If Steve Jobs had asked the customers if they wanted an iPhone four times bigger, with which you can't
make a phone call, he probably would not have released the iPad

French designer Yves Saint Laurent said: "Marketing is giving people things they never knew they
wanted"

 Real life stories of how people found their ideas

Design thinking methodology to refine your product or service

 As defined by Bill Moggridge, the co-founder of the consulting firm IDEO: "Design Thinking uses
the subconscious as well as the conscious mind, subjective as well as objective thinking, tacit
knowledge as well as explicit knowledge, and embraces learning by doing"
 IDEO gives the example of Kristian Simsarian, who when working on improving the design of a
hospital, had himself admitted as a patient. He realized that patients spend most of their time at
the hospital staring at the ceiling. Stepping in the shoes of a patient allowed Kristian to see an
 area for improvement. And as a result, he put significant effort into making the ceiling as
beautiful as possible.
 Design thinking also involves "extreme users", the category of users that tends to push a
product to its limits, and helps you make it more robust. A good example of extreme users could
be an airplane pilot or a flight attendant.

"Minimum Viable Product" and "Agile Development"

 A "Minimum Viable Product" is the lightest version of the product you want to achieve for
testing
 Instead of doing long and tedious developments, you do several "sprints" of development.

“trust yourself, push the boundaries and aim for something that you think even for you is too hard,
because there are, you know, the chances are you're going to succeed, in every instance, you're going to
make the product better”

Tal is a serial entrepreneur, and is the co-founder and chief learning officer of The Wholebeing
Institute, Potentialife, Maytiv, and Happier.TV.

Here is one of his interesting articles about happiness.

http://speakingmatters.org/tal_ben-shahar.html

What makes organizations more creatively competitive?

https://www.ideo.com/question/how-can-design-help-organizations-be-more-creatively-competitive

The “S Curve” and the Singularity Concept part 1

S curve by David Roberts

David Roberts considered that disruption happens, not when a new technology becomes actually better
than the preceding, but before, when the technology becomes "good enough", compared to the existing
technology.

Likewise, many users began to use petrol cars when they became "good enough" compared to the
horses, even if they still had some heavy drawbacks at the time.

Now that we understand the S Curve concept, what should we conclude about the right timing for you
to launch a disruptive innovation on the market? Well, it is precisely when the product becomes "good
enough", not when it becomes superior to the preceding technology, that you should launch your
product.

Exercise: Now I invite you to share your thoughts on the food delivery market.

Using the S Curve concept, try to analyse why the web based food delivery market never made it big
until recently, knowing that the first services began in the mid-nineties.

While working on this case, try to focus your attention on the strategic components that have
contributed to make this service “good enough”
You can also have a look at https://www.forbes.com/sites/bizcarson/2017/12/20/from-virtual-
restaurants-to-exclusive-pop-ups-the-new-war-in-food-delivery-is-in-the-kitchen/#7319b64e4a4c to get
another view

After watching the videos about S curve and the singularity concept, we invite you to read this article
from Stanford

https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/2010-
11/TechnologicalSingularity/pageview2efb.html?file=againstfeasibility.html

GATHERING A FOUNDING TEAM

 finding and convincing your first teammates to jump in and join you
 You have certainly met "would-be entrepreneurs" who told you they had a great idea, a great
business plan, and that they were looking for a partner to launch it. Well, this is exactly what
you should not do because this situation can last forever, and those potential entrepreneurs will
most likely stay "potential" entrepreneurs forever. The other thing you should never do is ask
people around you if they would like to partner with you. Why never ask? Simply because it puts
you in an impossible negotiation situation. If you are the one who asks, this somehow shows
that you are weak and that your project is not that good. So the only way to go if you start alone
and want to have one or several partners join you later, is to... really start!
 Let the idea convince
 Name the company, print cards (Don’t write CEO, just your name and company’s since CEO
closes the doors for a 50/50 partnership and gives the impression that you make the final
decision), website telling the vision (Our not my vision, Our values) Share all this on social media,
get an office
 ^All this to attract talented people
 Time to incorporate
 remember that the key is to have a core team of entrepreneurs with you, who will feel like that
and never ask you why they work late or on the weekends. You must gather such a team of
diehard committed people around you
 if you think this share is a bit high, a good trick is for you to say: "Okay, I agree, just with one
little detail, you would get half of it immediately and the other half after 12 or 16 months"
 "why you do not give more?", a good, and true, answer is to say you want to keep some space
for the future partners, because you're very ambitious for the company
 Real life stories; (should be difficult for people to say no)

Till Bootstrapping versus Raising money