Out to transform business in Colombia

I’ve found that it pays to have lofty goals.  When I first arrived to Colombia, I worked at a well-known technology multinational corporation and told my team that I wanted to build a world-class services organization.  One way to measure ourselves was by the satisfaction of our user base.  Four years later, we were named the top country by that metric in the whole world.  Now, I’m at it again, seeing how ridiculously ambitious I can get with a new Lean Startup Enterprise initiative.

In a sense, I’m expanding the scope of what I do with the Founder Institute, which I’ve been running for four years in Colombia.  While that incubator (I’m careful not to say accelerator as one commenter is sensitive to the use of this term :)) is focused on startups, the Lean Startup Enterprise initiative expands this scope and invites corporate employees to join the party.

Can we transform business in Colombia? Well, time will tell, but I personally need to aspire to hard or impossible tasks to keep me motivated.  I actually think that Lean Startup and it’s tenets are only the beginnings of a new business development methodology that assumes a rapidly changing business environment.

We’re at a point in history where this is definitely the case.  In particular, new digital tools have opened up new ways to invent how business is done (e.g., business models).  Nonetheless, other contributing factors include the contrast in growth from “developed” and emerging markets, global economic shifts (principally, towards Asia), among others.

Good business is still good business and managing cash flow, being a solid leader and executing the day-to-day operations of any business continue to be incredibly important.  However, until recently, previous management methods have fallen short in providing the tools to deal with the accelerated change we’re seeing in the current business environment.

Lean Startup responds to this need and is a good first step towards making better use of the new realities of faster and, more economical access to customers.  For Colombia, the opportunity is to get business people (startups and companies) to ask better questions and make customer needs their starting point for new innovations.

For the Bogota workshop on June 27-29, I’m assembling a team of mentors who understand Lean Startup methodologies (verified through an online assessment of our skills) and most of whom have actually worked with companies following said methodologies.  The workshop will be held at Wayra Colombia‘s modern offices.

In the above photo, are some of the mentors which include Nayib Abdala, Camilo Serna, and Robbie Frye (all of the hair in the above photo is courtesy of Nayib).  Among the mentors who will also be part of the team, but are not in the photo, are Pedro Fernandez and Nelson Mora.  Martin Giorgetti was on board also, but, unfortunately, has to travel out of the country during those dates.

As I said, all of us have worked with companies employing Lean Startup and other methodologies and we are all validating our skills through the Lean Startup Enterprise online assessment.   Thus, we’ll be congregating the most passionate and knowledgeable souls on Lean Startup in Bogotá on that weekend, pooling our know-how and passion so as to build a new business environment in the country for creating new innovations (digital innovation included).   Join us by purchasing your tickets now to lock-in the $50 savings.