Stanford EntrepreneurEntrepreneurship isn’t a career, it’s a way of life

Social Entrepreneurship ASB - Class SixFiled Under: class, entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship

Professor Tina Seelig, who I have mentioned before here and here, came to our class today. We spent the majority of the class period engaged in an activity designed by her, and I have to say it ranks in the top five of the most AMAZING classes at Stanford thus far. It was a phenomenal rush and I think I can spend at least twice as much time analyzing what happened in the activity than we actually spent on the activity. Here’s an entry of how things progressed.

Entrepreneurship Week

Entrepreneurship Week will be a week of fun and excitement in which we will take some common item and create value - value being however we want to define it. We will also see the premiere of “Imagine It!,” a movie that recaps the first ever Entrepreneurship Week and the value that was created with post it notes. Tina gave us a quick run down of what would be happening and what to expect. I am thoroughly excited, as I’m sure she is too!

Class Activity

Professor Seelig divided us into four groups. Each group was then given about 20 playing cards and the goal is to develop the tallest house of cards out of a single deck. There were a couple other rules that resulted in more points, but that was the important theme. Each team was also handed X number of sticks that could be used for trading because they were valued at one point each. Because the cards we were given were from three different decks, we quickly learned that we had to trade for a single deck if possible.

Trading

For our team, I was the official trader and I went around to each group trying to trade for the cards we didn’t have. I was able to get all from one group, and tried to create urgency between the other two groups to trade for the remaining deck. The reason being is that three decks split amongst four teams works only for three teams. Eventually, one team ended up not having trades, Tina called all of us to go back to our teams because she had an announcement.

Lose a Team Member

The announcement Tina made was to have one team member volunteer - which was me - and then that team member was “enticed” by another group and left the original team. I ended up with the group that did not do any trading and was stuck with cards that everyone wanted but had nothing to trade. We were also allowed to steal some IP, which I took as one of our simple leftover cards.

The Merger

Because the team I was on had pretty much nothing going for it, I proposed we should merge with my original team. One benefit is that we would have a nearly complete deck plus cards from the other two decks to prevent the other teams from getting the complete deck (and the point bonus that resulted).  Another is that we would have more negotiating power and leverage because if the other two teams merged, we would still have the cards that they needed. After talking it over with my new team members, they were all for it and we proposed it to my old team. They thought it was a great idea and we created the new super team.

Finishing Off The Deck

After the merger, the other two teams realized the mistake of their hesitancy to merge. We were offered the proposition of merging with another team and because we had already merged once and were in a position of strength, we decided not to merge. Then Tina pulled out the remaining cards and decided to auction them off. Because we had twice the sticks - worth a point each - to purchase the deck, we ended up winning the bid by a point more than what the other teams had. Thus, we had a complete deck and the cards the other teams needed. We were “winning”.

Goal: Create The Most Value

Knowing that we were going to “win” by the standard of points, we started to ponder if that was actually how Tina was going to evaluate us and how we could tie the theme of the class - social entrepreneurship - into it. We realized we were stuck in this competitive mindset that said to create the most value for us, but because of one of our team members we realized the goal was to create the most value, period. As such, to create the most value in points, we should redistribute the cards to the other teams so that they had full decks. This happened with about five minutes to spare, and the elation of realizing we could all win was amazing.

Lessons Learned

1. Steal good ideas. A number of the ideas presented were stolen and ended up creating a large amount of value for every team involved.
2. Accountability and trust are key to future transactions. My taking a simple card when I had to leave my original team instead of the most prized card made it much easier to merge groups. One of the other individuals from another team stole extra sticks when leaving and this resulted in mistrust and made it harder to convince teams to make deals with one another.
3. Know what rules to break. Rules are made to be interpreted, and it is through these interpretations that opportunities can be recognized. Be sure to recognize that there is a fine line for acting ethically and unethically, though.
4. Recognize and seize opportunities. There are windows of times in which some opportunities are available, and if they aren’t recognized in time, they disappear. Be prepared to take advantage of them as they become available.
5. Value is how you define it. Value can be created in a number of ways and by clearly defining what value your team wants to create, it becomes much easier to maximize that value and recognize opportunities that take you closer to your goal.
6. Leverage resources. Life is full of limits, and it is through effective leverage that these resources work to your advantage.
7. Team dynamics are important. By creating a stellar team where everyone knows their role and is on the same page in terms of goals is invaluable to success.
8. Use time wisely. Some teams spent too much time thinking about what to do versus actually doing it. This led to missed opportunities and overanalyzing the situation - which resulted in hesitation.

Conclusion

Overall, GREAT class with lots of invaluable nuggets of wisdom. While you can read my blog articles and get a feel for what I experienced, there is no substitute for actually trying this experiment. I feel that if I participated in a variation of this experiment in multiple contexts, there would be more lessons and greater levels of understanding developed. So, stop reading and go do it yourself!