Category: entrepreneurship

entrepreneurship, innovation

The Entrepreneur and the Engineers, or How 1+1 Equals 1,000

In twenty years, SpaceX has revolutionized the space industry. Yet when the company was founded in 2002, its founder, Elon Musk, had neither the best technology nor the most experienced engineers in the industry. Those engineers were working at Boeing and Lockheed Martin, heirs to sixty years of expertise dating back to Mercury and Apollo. But that expertise operated within a mindset so ingrained that it had become invisible: a rocket is single-use, a launch costs hundreds of millions, and that’s just the way it is. Musk, however, asked a seemingly naive question: why couldn’t a rocket be reusable, like an airplane? His resounding success shows that in disruptive innovation, the factor that makes the difference is not technical resources, but the mental model. This touches on the very essence of entrepreneurship.

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Economy and society, entrepreneurship, innovation, Society

Disruptive Innovation: Ignore the Elite, Bet on the Underdogs

History is full of unfortunate predictions. However, the New York Times’s claim in 1903 that human flight would not be possible for another one to ten million years is one of the most striking examples. Is this a classic case of pessimism from an era unable to anticipate technological progress? Not quite. The story is far more interesting. It’s about an elite that uses its own failure as proof of impossibility while underdogs persist in trying and ultimately succeed.

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decision making, entrepreneurship, uncertainty

To reduce uncertainty, try cooperation!

How can uncertainty be reduced? This is the question that is preoccupying all executive committees in France and the rest of the world in these troubled times. The most obvious temptation is to mobilize the arsenal of predictive thinking: foresight, scenarios, modeling, customer surveys, and nowadays, of course, AI. However, uncertainty is not resolved through forecasting, but through action. And in this regard, the most powerful action is cooperation. One blind person holding the hand of another blind person? Not necessarily: cooperation means that we no longer need to predict in order to act creatively and move forward without being paralyzed.

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Economy and society, entrepreneurship, innovation, Society

Europe’s competitiveness: the missed opportunity of the Draghi report

Electroshock. Emergency call. Existential threat. The report on Europe’s competitiveness that Mario Draghi, former head of the European Central Bank, presented to the President of the European Commission on September 9 has caused quite a stir, to say the least. The report marks a salutary awakening to Europe’s decline, the symptoms of which it clearly identifies. But the proposed remedies remain conventional – a plan, a loan and an industrial policy. It’s a missed opportunity, or almost.

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Economy and society, entrepreneurship, innovation, Society

In praise of indirection, or how problems aren’t always solved by problem solving

Problem solving is a universal paradigm, and a very dangerous one. We believe that the world is full of problems and that we can solve them if we really try. But this is not true. Many problems are solved indirectly, thanks to a solution that was not imagined by those who faced them. That’s why it’s important to allow free innovation, i.e. solutions without problems, no matter how absurd they may seem.

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decision making, entrepreneurship, uncertainty

The pilot in the plane: When faced with uncertainty, move from prediction to control

The more uncertain the world, the more anxious we are, and the more we intensify our efforts to predict. It’s a paradox with no way out. The key to uncertainty is not prediction – which is dangerous – but control. This general attitude implies seven very concrete ideas for taking action and giving ourselves the opportunity to create something new that is our own.

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decision making, entrepreneurship, Management, uncertainty

Ideal or singularity? Montaigne’s lesson for acting in an uncertain world

As the world swirls with change and uncertainty, knowing and embracing our true selves becomes crucial—not just to anchor us, but to liberate us. Montaigne believed that understanding and accepting our limits allows us to face uncertainty without bias. Instead of judging what exists, we imagine what could be. Could this perspective be the key to navigating today’s ever-shifting landscape?

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entrepreneurship, innovation, Society

The True Source of Social Change; and it’s not Politics

The world is changing profoundly, rapidly, and in every dimension. But where is this change coming from? What’s causing it? For many, the answer is simple: the world is changing because of political action. Great leaders take a problem and act to solve it. But when we look at history and the evolution of the world, another reality emerges: social change is rooted in everyday life. Change that is not wanted and organized by politicians, but often only sanctioned – or slowed down – by them.

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entrepreneurship

What is a good idea? The Power of Social Proof in Entrepreneurship

What is a good idea? It’s the billion dollar question for every entrepreneur. When asked this question, we tend to try to answer in absolute terms. We assume that an idea is some kind of abstract object “out there. In practice, experienced entrepreneurs have a very different answer: an idea is good… if someone is somehow willing to pay for it. Call it the social proof of a good idea.

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