This video was sent to me by @ddej and @kittenthebad, thanks!
Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, tells about a project she assigned to an entrepreneurship class. How much money could you make in 2 hours with $5 of seed funding?
The results were amazing and encouraging to those of us that like to overcome constraints.
Ben from the Instigator blog, highlights a handful of important lessons, here are my favorite:
1) There’s no substitute for doing something. That’s clear with the groups that had success. It’s not that they didn’t think about it, plan, brainstorm, etc. It’s their actions that were important. There were no business plans or slide presentations — just action, evaluation and reaction.
2) The teams that succeeded had a very strong sense of what was going on around them. It’s about having an awareness of your surroundings, to pick up on people’s needs, subtleties in the market that others might not recognize. It’s a good reminder that running straight ahead with your head down like a bull charging a red flag isn’t going to give you the perspective you need to succeed.
What a great project! I would have loved to do something like that when I was in university.
That sounds like a great exercise for classes everywhere. It’s a lesson that could help many different classes, especially ones where critical thought and a focus on doing.
