What do consumers want?

Yesterday, Dr. Fyfer invited me to present the latest on the "majamba story" amongst other things to the students at the Business School Lausanne (BSL). For those who do not know - BSL is leading the charge for management innovation in Switzerland and perhaps continental Europe. The students are experienced and the professors combine business practice with theory by inviting people who are in the trenches to share their experience (that's why I was there).

After I presented majamba and what we are building and our goals, I opened up for discussion. And the response was awesome!

The BSL folks sliced and diced up the majamba business model to get to the core. And I realized that what consumers really want is to directly help people who need help. And anyone who is able to build a platform that allows the "rich" to support the "poor" directly is going to be able to do good.

That's it - it's that simple. So once again thank you Dr. Fyfer and I think the name of your student was Martin. Martin, thank you!

making sense of it all

I am trying to make sense of the what's happening in the world right now. More specifically in the world of entrepreneurship. And even more specifically in the world of Internet Start-ups.

Here is my take: The Doer's are winning!

The thinkers - Economists, Philosophers, Strategists, Consultants, Architects...have to learn from the Developers, Designers, Activists and other Action oriented people.

Social media is dominated by people who get things done; they do and then they talk. Dreaming, postulating, imagining, or just talking & powerpointing is being pushed to the back seat.

So is this the end of the road for the thinkers?

First of all, I must come clean (as you may know), I am an economist who made his living as a strategist for fourteen years before becoming an entrepreneur last year. I would certainly like to think that thinkers have a place in our world.

So here is what we need to do, my dear fellow thinkers - learn from your friends: The doer's. Learn how they focus on getting things done, not just talking about it. Imagine the impact of combining thinking with doing, you know the oriental saying "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare".

I am now - together with Alex & Jeannine and thanks to my friends Noel, Tom & Joe - focussing on building majamba to be of more use to our members. We will make majamba more relevant to our members. This is going to be a journey of continuous learning, meeting new people, new friends, new ideas, re-establishing old relationships, sharpening our pure vision (support people who want to do good, become super successful) and most importantly improve continuously - hence the name of this journey is "KAIZEN".