I decided to write more on technopreneurship.  Very few educational establishments offer courses on entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship and its different flavors should be groomed as a life style. I will write about grooming technopreneurship today.

Technopreneurship programs should be added as an integral part of the education offering an entrepreneurial culture by planting the seeds for new ventures, preparing entrepreneurs through technopreneurship education, and providing the infrastructure to perpetuate and support new start-ups and ventures. The program should integrate value chain of enterprise creation; one that encourages start-ups, tolerates failure and rewards well. The key essence in such technopreneurship programmes is creativity. Creativity is breaking the conventional mental blocks and playing with imagination and possibilities, leading to new and meaningful connections and outcomes while interacting with ideas, people and the environment. However creativity alone, without technoprenuer skills and competencies, is not viable to sustain a business in a digital, knowledge-based economy. You need an integrated collaborative approach in turning an idea into a viable sustainable business in a digital economy. An approach that encompasses the 5Cs strategy;

Culture: The need to nurture a culture of innovation, entrepreneurship and creativity.
Concept: Incubation concept of role-modeling, research and development, IP creation and Knowledge Acquisition.
Capability: Build capability through training and awareness programs, industrial attachment and provision of financial and support.
Collaboration: Foster multi-prong collaborations with local and international industry partners, tertiary institutions and other ICT technoprenuers and start-ups.
Connection: Build association with strategic Multi-National Corporations in ICT areas in order to facilitate the transfer of knowledge to local technoprenuers, and support structures.

So you have what it takes to be a Technoprenuer, roll up your sleeves and get started! And make things happen!

If you enjoyed reading my posts, then please Click Here to Subscribe to my RSS feed.

Rajesh Shakya - Helping technopreneurs to excel and lead their life!

Technopreneur - a terminology, I have used in my blog tagline. Many readers asked me questions to explain that word.

Bill Gates! Microsoft! Steve Jobs! Apple! Sergey Brin and Larry Page! Google! Count the names of entrepreneurs who started Oracle! YouTube! Facebook!

Wonder what they are? Then you are not ready to be a technoprenuer! Add your name in queue.

If you have decided to add your name in the queue, I am sure, you have what it takes to be a technoprenuer.

A technoprenuer is an entrepreneur who is technology savvy, creative, innovative, dynamic, dares to be different and take the unexplored path, and very passionate about their work. They take challenges and strive to lead their life with greater success. They don’t fear to fail. They take failure as a learning experience, a stimulator to look things differently and stride for next challenge. Technoprenuers continuously go through an organic process of continual improvement and always try to redefine the dynamic digital economy.

Technology and entrepreneurial skills are driving many economies to prosperity. The most famous of them all is, Bill Gates, who makes Microsoft a household name all over the world. Steve Jobs - well known for his innovations. iPod - most carried gadget by young population. Look at the success of Google - brain child of Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Who don’t know Google?

Technopreneurship is not a product but a process of synthesis in engineering the future of a person, an organization, a nation and the world. In a digital, knowledge based society, strategic directions or decision-making processes will be demanding and complex. This requires tertiary level and professional development programs and training to produce strategic thinkers who will have the skills to succeed in a dynamically changing global environment. Traditional educational programs, however, lack the methodology to transform today’s students into creative, innovative, visionary global leaders who understand the importance of technopreneurship.

If you enjoyed reading my posts, then please Click Here to Subscribe to my RSS feed.

When I speak on the topic of success or failure, one or two people from the audience always ask me whether I have ever failed? Everyone of us has a story in us. Yes, I have failed many times. In my first few public speakings, I hesitated to tell about my failures. I feared that people will not believe my stories. Every time I failed, I always tried to learn from that. Thats why, I did not lost my will to win when I failed. The willingness in us makes the difference. But the results are great! Results may not be in terms of business success. Results can be in terms of mistakes learned along the way.

Things don’t always work out the ways you want. You test your concept, analyze, plan, project, design, implement and start perfectly but still fail at some point. How you take your failures will have more importance than the actual failures themselves.

Complacency is stagnation and procrastination. Failure, you can learn from and use for further improvement whereas complacency shields you to see it as a mistake (even though it is).

Besides many failures, I have been visibly successful as well. Because of the overwhelming success, many times I felt some sort of complacency grooming inside me. There have been times in the past that complacency almost ruined my life. I had achieved significantly more than I ever dreamed of. But I knew about it myself and I even talked to colleagues about this. I knew, I had to learn the hard way to be a better coach for myself. I learned, complacency is much more dangerous and harmful than failure. Read my previous blog post on Inner Quest.
Read more…

I received many emails after I wrote the post on innovation - “Innovation - a mantra to survive in business“. Thank you for your time and effort to write me and also asking me to share more on this.

Innovation has always perplexed people, at the same time, it is essential for progress and ultimately for economic growth. I have seen people who treats equally to the invention and innovation. Joseph Alois Schumpeter, an Austrian economist known for the theory of business cycle, attributed innovation to entrepreneurs. He was of the view that entrepreneurs innovate, not only the finding uses for inventions, but also by introducing new means of production, new products, new ways of providing services,and new forms of organizations.

Innovation, the term itself is derived from the latin “innovatus”, which means to “change” from the present way of doing
Read more…

In my last post- “What you need to become an entrepreneur?“, I discussed about the different forms of “capitals” essential for business venture. Today I am trying to put forward few other fundamental things that you should really understand for successful entrepreneurial venture.

Your every move is the deciding move. Every move makes impact on your result. Your first move should be even more important, on that move you decide where you are heading towards? So you should make a thoughtful, well-informed decision to succeed. When I look at the successful, failed or “growth trapped” businesses, in general, I see three success pillars that decide their fate.

Three Pillars for Successful Business Venture

Work with Right People

Follow the Customer demand

Control your Finance

You must start with right people with required skills, experience, attitude and drive. And another essential is that you must know the mystery of your business.

You may have many crazy ideas and may be you are extremely capable but if those ideas are not doable or not achievable in short length, you can not win so easily. You must produce or deliver something your target customers really want, its
Read more…

When I speak to my audience, I love to ask warm-up questions at the beginning. If I ask them whether they know what they need to become an entrepreneur, most of them answer in one voice - “Capital”, “Capital”, “Capital”. True, capital is one of the major requirements to start a startup. And most of them consider the capital in terms of financial aspect only. Capital is more than just money and there are more other forms of capitals equally or even more important than money to become an entrepreneur. Yesterday, I discussed about the Integrity as the ultimate requirement for excellence in business and in one of my previous posts, I discussed on Innovation as the mantra for survival in business. Today I will discuss on one of such essentials, the capital and their other forms:

Emotional Capital
I have not seen coaches on Entrepreneurship spoke on this capital, the emotional capital. This is your aspiration, passion and perseverance that always keeps you thriving to excel and drives to become successful entrepreneur. If you can not keep your emotional capital leveled high, in many cases the start-up entrepreneurs tend to pull back themselves so often even at small waves. In another way, emotional capital is an entrepreneurial instinct, which is a well-rooted desire to have
Read more…

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs made the Historic Joint Appearance at the Fifth Annual “D: All Things Digital” Conference. In their rare joint appearance at All Things Digital 5, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates discussed their contributions to the technology industry, the qualities they most respect in one another, and former Apple CEO Gil Amelio’s seamanship. The two men also discussed the history and future of the digital revolution in an unrehearsed, unscripted, onstage conversation with D co-producers Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. Watch out the inspiring and historic show of this decade in 7 parts.
Part 1 of 7:

To watch rest of the videos in this series, follow the links below:

• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Part 2
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Part 3
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Part 4
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Part 5
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Part 6
• Steve Jobs and Bill Gates Part 7

We never thought we would see the day where Apple and Microsoft so easily and so comfortably share the same stage with that much of respect to each other, but that happened today.

Click here for the full transcript of the conversation.

If you enjoyed reading my posts, then please Subscribe to My RSS feed.

It seems like almost all, who are involved in business, these days consider themselves an entrepreneur. Same thing applies for me. I am recipient of the Best Entrepreneur award in Information Technology for three years in sequence from 2004 to 2006. Business community tagged as an entrepreneur, but I was not sure if I was an entrepreneur. Am I really an entrepreneur? To qualify myself as an entrepreneur, I looked at the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2007. Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) defines entrepreneurship as any attempt by individuals to start a new firm, including any attempt for self-employment.

GEM categorizes three types of Entrepreneurs:

Traditional Entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship is always a major contributing factor to the socio-economic development of a country, which helps
Read more…

Technewsworld.com recently published an article by Byron Acohido, Jim Hopkins, Jefferson Graham and Michelle Kessler from USA Today with the collection of life-changing inventions during last 25 years. I found the collection very informative and worth to know. Let me share you the information with you:

1. Cell phones

Car phones were around in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until 1983 that Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Latest News about Motorola introduced the first widely available handheld Get the facts on wireless solutions suited to your industry. cell phone. The DynaTAC 8000x weighed almost two pounds, but it still cost US$3,995.

2. Laptop computers

It was about as portable as a sewing machine, but the 28-pound Compaq Portable — Compaq Computer’s very first product — was the first portable IBM-compatible PC on the market. More than 53,000 sold in the year after its 1983
Read more…

What is Innovation and how does it impact the capabilities and fortunes of any business? Peter Drucker, great management guru, called innovation a “change that creates a new dimension of performance.”
In order for something to qualify as a true innovation, it should simultaneously meet three basic criteria - must engage a creative process, be distinctive and possess a measurable impact.It’s now time that traditional businesses, entrepreneurs and startup companies come up with the innovative ideas to change the world through path breaking offerings and with their focus on improving quality, customer focus with emotional intelligence (EQ), knowledge management through process innovations and technology solutions delivery. Only with innovations, businesses today can succeed and sustain and even extend their edge over others in competition space.
With each success come greater expectations. You exceed the expectation, you push the envelop in each service offer and the customer after having being greatly pleased with better customer service, lower cost and quick delivery expects even more. This applies to everyone. This is the major challenge now facing many businesses. Delivering “more” or “better” can be done by increasing efficiency, but beyond a point, the curve begins to flatten and it becomes increasingly difficult to keep proving even more value-for-money (VOF). The only way to do so is through innovation, not just executing the same rituals more efficiently. Do something completely different to achieve the required output. Guy Kawasaki beautifully discussed some of the important things on the Art of Innovation in his blog.

Innovation requires a nurturing climate and competitive playing field - funding, culture to encourage innovation, ambiance/facilities, mentoring, coaching, professional networking, IPR, marketing.
If you enjoyed reading my posts, then please Subscribe to My RSS feed.