Why Place Still Has
Meaning, for Presidents and Entrepreneurs
The Obama Foundation Summit focused in part on
the role entrepreneurs can play in developing economies. But it's important to
remember that you've got to be good where you start before you can start
bringing your magic to other countries.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute
for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
We
welcomed President and Mrs. Obama to the Kaplan Institute last week where they
hosted the 2019 Summit of the Obama Foundation for about 400 of their friends,
fellows, supporters and other dignitaries and partners. The Foundation is the
organization that funds and directs the construction in Chicago of the Obama
Presidential Center as well as a hub for all kinds of programming and
activities. The Summit was an amazing day of activities, with excited folks
from more than 40 countries talking about a wide variety of topics including,
of course, the global role and impact of entrepreneurship and innovation.
All
of these conversations and discussions were undertaken in the context of the conference's
main theme -the critical importance of place. More specifically, how our places
ultimately dictate and reveal our purpose. I think I clearly understood the
"place" part; the connection to purpose was a little less
clear. In fact, President Obama made a great point about how his
family's remarkable journey had a lot to do with the fact that they always made
it a priority to "take the family and the South Side of Chicago
neighborhood" with them wherever they went. They never hid it,
they never walked away from it, and they never apologized for it. Place was the
rock-solid foundation upon which so much of their future success was built.
My
first session with a group of Obama Fellows and the Foundation chair was all
about the prospects for effective change-making through global
entrepreneurship. I started by suggesting that we needed to understand the
difference between: (a) encouraging the spread of entrepreneurship worldwide
through education and various other means of support (which was devoutly to be
hoped for); and (b) buying blindly into the quasi-colonial idea that we, in the
United States, had all the right answers. Or that the right technologies would
cure all evils and solve every problem; that one size and one solution would
work globally; and that, in the hyper-connected world of tomorrow,
"place" actually mattered less than ever in terms of bringing
about significant changes.
Place
absolutely matters. The most recurring question that I heard throughout the day
was "what can I do where I am?" How can I get started, how
can I make an impact - even if it's modest to begin with - in my community or
my city or my social circle? How do I make sure that what I'm hoping to do -
fits? Fits the times, suits the situation, aligns with the available
resources, and mostly, conforms (within reason) to the cultural norms and
behaviors? Of course, these are exactly the same kinds of questions and
concerns that any smart new business builder would ask as well.
And
other important takeaways, albeit expressed in the most polite ways, were the
notes of caution about exporting our quick-and-easy answers to other countries
and expecting results. Careful preparation, groundwork in the field, and
abundant patience are far more important in some countries than an abundance of
directions, equipment, and "solutions," accompanied by armies of
unguided, but excessively enthusiastic and well-intentioned amateurs.
As
I listened to these entrepreneurs from across the world describing their own
often painful experiences, I ultimately came away with a different question: in
a time when "place" is increasingly critical to both purpose and
success, what shouldn't we try to do from where we are?
There
are some very critical lessons here for entrepreneurs in a rush to "go
global," to open offices and markets outside of the U.S. in order to plant
their flag (and claim bragging rights), and to jump ahead of themselves long
before they have demonstrated that their basic business model even makes sense
-;not to mention money-; in their initial domestic markets. WeWork was in 110
cities at last count and look where they are now.
Even
apart from the usual mixed blessings of being a first mover, there are the
serious risks of educating local competitors around the world, who quickly
figure out better-suited, cheaper and more culturally and economically correct
offerings before you have the team, the talent, the connections and the
infrastructure to properly support those markets. The truth is that some
foreign markets may never be right for your business or they may be just too
challenging to make good sense. Headlong expansion without the right economics
can drag down not just the new markets, but your overall business as well.
Amazon
largely bailed on certain of its offerings in China after spending more than a
decade trying to break in and ending up with a market share of just over 1%.
Starbucks is getting its butt kicked in China in terms of locations by a
4-year-old startup which developed better, faster and more mobile solutions to
cater to the local caffeine freaks. As they sometimes say in Vermont when you
ask a local for directions: "you can't get there from here." Be
careful to try to "know" as much as possible about new foreign
markets before you "go."
Who's
doing things right? It's early in the game, but one telling example is a
relatively new rollout by Netflix of a show called Criminal, which
launched specific and different versions in four different countries --
Germany, Spain, the U.K. and France-- with not simply dubbed languages or
subtitles, but with actual changes in the casts (local talent), scripts and
story scenarios that incorporated domestic cultural mores and behavioral
variations as well. We'll see if this approach works and scales, but it's a
start for sure in recognizing that success is more likely to be found in
acknowledging and aligning your offerings (through support for local
entrepreneurs and partners, joint ventures, licensing or even franchising,
etc.) to the customs, players and parties in the particular marketplace, than
by trying to bigfoot the whole world.
The
trick in the end is to make your system fit the people in each place and their
needs and desires, rather than the other way around. If you don't, you may
never get from here to there.