Critical Skills for The New Era of Entrepreneurship: Advancing Socially Responsible and Sustainable Ventures

“The betterment of society is not a job to be left to a few. It’s a responsibility to be shared by all.” – David Packard

The 2016 award-winning documentary Sustainable by Matt Wechsler and Annie Speicher takes us through industrial agriculture’s devastating effects on the land, the farmers, and our environment. The film’s tenet is: “The future of our food system determines the future of mankind.” 

The future of the food system and several other social problems, such as the climate crisis, are known as “wicked problems.” 

Who is responsible for solving such problems?  As Packard says, it is our collective responsibility. 

In his 2013 TED Talk, “The case for letting business solve social problems,” Michael Porter, economist, researcher, author, advisor, speaker, and teacher, says: 

“Business does not profit from causing social problems, actually not in any fundamental sense. That’s a very simplistic view. The deeper we get into these issues, the more we start to understand that actually business profits from solving from social problems. That’s where the real profit comes. Let’s take pollution. We’ve learned today that actually reducing pollution and emissions is generating profit. It saves money. It makes the business more productive and efficient. It doesn’t waste resources.”

Entrepreneurs should embrace the idea of solving social problems with enthusiasm. They can do so by adopting three tools to enhance their critical thinking skills—design thinking, systems thinking, and computational thinking—and use them with emotional intelligence. The same necessary skills can also be brought to bear on not-so-wicked problems.

Design Thinking

The premise of design thinking is that you can build better solutions by incorporating the art of questioning at every stage to delight the users. 

The design thinking process involves a series of steps:

1. Understanding the problem completely, with empathy.
2. Exploring a range of possible solutions. 
3. Refining the solution iteratively through prototyping and extensive testing.
4. Implementing the solution.

There are many success stories of companies that have used design thinking. One such story is that of Oral B, the maker of electric toothbrushes. The Harvard Business School Online’s Business Insights Blog, “5 Examples Of Design Thinking In Business,” tells the story of Oral B, which wanted to make its electric brushes more appealing by adding features that would track usage and other behaviors and also play music! While researching the requirement, they enlisted the help of designers Kim Colin and Sam Hecht, who identified that brushing teeth was already somewhat stressful for the users, and adding more functionality would make it unpleasant. They came up with suggestions that make it truly beneficial for the users. One has to do with making it easier to charge the brushes while traveling. The other was to connect the brushes to smartphones so that reordering when it was time to replace the brush head became easy. 

Oral B used design thinking to look for solutions with users in mind instead of an idea someone in the company thought would be beneficial. 

You cannot become a designer overnight by using design thinking for challenging problems, and entrepreneurs would be well advised to use a designer who has worked in the domain. On the other hand, the design thinking framework can be applied by anyone who has taken a course or has attended a workshop to find a solution with the user in mind. It allows one to look past simple-minded answers to understand complex problems and create a solution that considers all the stakeholders involved.

Systems Thinking

“Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing ‘patterns of change’ rather than ‘static snapshots.” – Peter Senge

A system comprises interactions between the elements that are part of it. In complex problem solving, it is vital to understand how a change in one of the elements impacts the others and, together with them, the system as a whole. In the fascinating article “Systems Thinking at BMW: Clearing Up Germany’s Traffic Jam,” the authors describe BMW’s challenge:

“BMW is in a tricky position: Its mission is to provide consumers with high-quality motor cars that guarantee maximum mobility and pleasure of traveling. Yet the company also realizes that traffic-related problems, if left unaddressed, will ultimately prevent it from fulfilling that mission — even though such problems are not caused by BMW’s products alone.”

The article describes the systems thinking in this case and concludes, “Clearly, BMW, along with its many partners, have made significant strides in “rewiring” this system. With time and careful attention to the dynamics at work, perhaps traffic management will someday prevail permanently over road management.”

The traffic problem described can be considered a wicked problem, and such problems don’t have a “stopping rule.”  

Many tools are available to help solve problems using the systems thinking framework. They include the Cynefin framework, Iceberg model, Concept Mapping, and Mind Mapping, to name a few.  

Computational Thinking

In her seminal essay, “Computational Thinking,” Dr. Jeannette M. Wing wrote, “Computational thinking is a fundamental skill for everyone, not just for computer scientists. To reading, writing, and arithmetic, we should add computational thinking to every child’s analytical ability. Just as the printing press facilitated the spread of the three Rs, what is appropriately incestuous about this vision is that computing and computers facilitate the spread of computational thinking.”   

Computational thinking is essential for entrepreneurs to take an idea from its inception to its deployment. It provides the critical elements required to implement a solution and involves four key concepts—decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithms.

The decomposition technique helps break up the problem into manageable parts. Finding similarities among these parts is pattern recognition, which allows us to find efficient solutions. Additionally, recognizing another challenge that has a similar pattern might help in adapting the solution to a new opportunity. Abstraction helps us focus on essential characteristics of objects or events without concern for each of them. Algorithms are instructions that help us implement a solution in a step-by-step process. 

Entrepreneurs of all types—not just those who create software systems—can leverage the power of computational thinking to innovate.

Emotional Intelligence

The three skills I mentioned create value only if you are emotionally intelligent. Your ability to understand yourself and perceive and evaluate the emotions and values of others is fundamental to being an entrepreneur.

In any problem-solving and creating value, innovators have to know themselves first. Knowing what you are good at and where you need help, how to approach those who can help, having the resiliency to withstand failures, and being tenacious and pivoting as needed are all characteristics of being emotionally intelligent. 

Entrepreneurs are creating solutions for those who need them. In the process, they have to work with many stakeholders. Having empathy for them and understanding their actual needs helps one create a product or offering of value to them.  

Critical Skills for The New Era of Entrepreneurship 

In today’s complex world, the problems we encounter can be solved by courageous entrepreneurs who are emotionally intelligent and use design thinking, systems thinking, and computational thinking. The world needs more of them. 

Written by Shantha Mohan.

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