76 / 134
74
|
DECEMBER 2016
|
THINK
WATER COOLER
Engineer Your Behavior
To Ensure Success
MIT mentor shares six ways to
achieve entrepreneurial goals
When eight out of 10 businesses are
failing within the first year, and 96 percent
are doomed to close within a decade, the
idea of building a lasting venture can seem
daunting to many entrepreneurs. But
Inga Stasiulionyte, a mentor at the MIT
Global Entrepreneurship boot camp, has
a handful of tips for business owners who
aim for longevity, all focused on developing
behaviors that will lead to success.
1
Challenge Everything You Know.
Want to think outside the box? Hack
your knowledge base. Challenging
what we know, why we do things
and how we do them is at the core of
what drives change and innovation,
says Stasiulionyte. But hacking isn’t
about flying in blind or working from
gut instinct. You’ve got to understand
the rules by which systems and
businesses have been built in order to
break them.
2
Condense Your
Timeline For Achieving Goals.
You may have been taught that life is
a marathon, not a sprint. But when
it’s time to crank out a new idea
or product, it behooves you to put
everything you’ve got into reaching or
completing a goal successfully in a
short amount of time. At the elite level,
says Stasiulionyte, quality and speed
exist side by side rather than working
against one another. To achieve
success in a set amount of time, you
must master your thoughts, actions,
discipline and planning.
3
Collaborate With Experts.
To achieve the best, you must work with
the best. Finding subject matter experts
and field experts helps you challenge
your limits as you learn how they break
through theirs. Collaborate on a project
that may not be in your wheelhouse,
and you’ll likely discover hacks and
strategies that can be applied to your
own challenges and goals by watching
others address their own.
4
Work On Your Weaknesses.
Pushing your limits and learning new
behaviors is one way to strengthen
personal and professional weaknesses.
Put effort into mastering the skills
you’ve never been “good” at. If selling
is your strength but budgets are your
weakness, take a finance class. Every
skill can use a tune‑up, and exercising
weak muscles only helps strong
muscles get stronger.
5
Pursue Your Purpose.
Do you take a goal‑oriented approach
to your professional and personal
endeavors? Shift your focus to purpose
first, and you may see the solutions
fall into place. Ask yourself
why
you’re
spending every waking hour bringing
an idea to fruition, and you’ll start to
see
how
it can best be achieved. Ask
yourself
why
you only take one hour a
week to exercise or tune into nature,
and you may discover
how
to make the
most of that time.
6
Test Every Idea.
An idea is only profitable if it becomes
a marketable, usable product or
service. To ensure ideas come to
fruition, you’ve got to test them out
in the real world—your customers
and your market. If audiences don’t
respond well, take the idea back to the
drawing board.
TECH TALK
Safe And Sound
New app lets users post
emergency notifications,
find help and stay safe.
Mobile technology might have its
drawbacks, such as taking our attention
from the world around us, but it can also be
a lifesaver. A new, free app called MyPanda
is latching onto the latter by allowing users
to not only report and identify the location
of suspicious or dangerous activity, but
it also allows them to locate nearby law
enforcement agencies and notify friends
and family via social media once they are in
a safe location.
MyPanda founders Cyril and Guillaume
Assentio worked with a team of researchers
and computer engineers for a year and a
half to develop an app that would provide
single‑click access to local police, quick
routes to safety, news updates and the
ability to report and respond to suspicious
activity. MyPanda was launched in June
and is available for both Apple and Android
devices. It is usable in the world’s largest
cities, including New York, Paris, Los
Angeles, Hong Kong and others.