Tag Archives: MBA

Master’s thesis’s executive summary online

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Collage featuring my broken nails, the executive summary on The Good Tribe’s blog and my nervous breakdown on Skype.

This turned into a real nail biter ;) I usually don’t bite my nails. But tonight I really did…

Our BIG master’s thesis draft on how to facilitate a business relationship between social entrepreneurs and business angels is ready – and the executive summary is online on The Good Tribe’s blog. This is our most humble Xmas gift to all social entrepreneurs, social and commercial business angels, impact and social investors out there, trying to facilitate well working business relationship, and of course a taste of our full master’s thesis.

How on earth am I going to be able to sleep now!? I’ve been looking forward to this day for over a year! Amazing feeling!

I’m also incredibly tired. When I wrote the preface I got so emotional that I started to cry…

Perhaps shutting off the computer is a nice way of starting to relax… tomorrow will also be a busy day.

Happy reading

The battle of social entrepreneurship discourses

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Last week me and Michael put up a blog post about the highly interesting battle of the hero and the communitarian discourses within social entrepreneurship. It’s great fun that the article is getting lots of hits – and we already got quoted for the draft of a book about social entrepreneurship. Exciting!

Excert from the blogpost:

These two movements are trying to control or even manipulate the discourse to gain credibility and justification for their definition by heavily pushing their own narratives. And there are strong indications that the hero entrepreneur with their powerful organizational and financial backing and sophisticated marketing is winning this battle. Aren’t we all sharing success stories and using words like scale, philantro-capitalism, professionals, leadership, result-orientated, pragmatic, risk-taking, visionary and passionate instead of social value, social justice, social change, advocacy, grants, donations, localism, cooperative and third-sector right now?

Read the full blogpost here. And read more about Earth overshoot day, which we also mention in the article here. The rest of the year we are living on recourses stolen from our children. Doesn’t feel that great if you ask me…

I can highly recommend reading the article, which inspired us to write our blog post: The Legitimacy of Social Entrepreneurship: Reflexive Isomorphism in a Pre-Paradigmatic Field by Alex Nicholls (2010). One of the most difficult academic texts I have ever read – bot SO worth it. Incredibly well written!

This is where I am!

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It’s really been quite some time since I updated my blog the last time… I’ve been kinda’ busy doing other things in the meantime… so to say ;) But now that I had homework from the university (!) which I interpreted as an opportunity to describe my path in life and what I’m interested in career wise I thought this text, in a slightly edited version would fit perfectly to make a short update on what I’ve been up to in the meantime. Here it goes!

During the past three years I’ve started to create a new direction in my life — a path of social entrepreneurship and a more sustainable and holistic way of living. At this point I’m still not sure exactly where all this will take me — but I’m very much convinced I’ve picked up valuable tools through my work, education and private life along the way. As so many times before the development of my life seems to be based on long sequences of events rather than single life-changing moments.

This current chain of events started to pick up speed about three years ago. I was in a position where I was fed up with my current job and I wanted to try something new. Gayathri, a former colleague of mine told me she was going to India to visit her relatives, and I simply asked if I could come and stay with her. She said yes and a few weeks later I landed in Chennai.  We spent five weeks travelling around southern India and getting to know each other and finding out how similar our dreams and future plans were — we decided that we wanted to work together in the future.

As we have started to build up our company we have continuously been challenged by the fact that we have lived in different countries. We have of course visited each other when we’ve been working on different projects and we’ve become queens of online collaboration. During this period I also enrolled in a master’s program and now, two intense years later I’m about to finish. A few more weeks of work on my thesis and some other assignments to complete and I’m done! (I hope!)

So this is where I am now. Newly wed, off to honeymoon next week, graduation coming up in a few months, experimenting with new exciting paths for the company. At this point I feel amazing, exhausted and blessed at the same time. I’m filled with love and care for my husband (I love writing that!), sister and the rest of my extended family. And I’m feeling truly grateful and humble having such amazing and caring friends and I feel that I’m getting ready to soon close the heavy chapter of writing the master’s thesis.

There are so many things in my personal and professional life that I’m curios and excited about — there are so many things I want to know more about, try and experience. And as one step in the sequence of events I mentioned in the beginning, as a quest of sorting out my feelings, ideas and notions I decided to make three maps, if you will, to help navigate and find my path; In the spirit of Gala Darling a list of Things which make me smile, a mind map where I’ve jotted down what draws my attention in business life and finally a list of 100 things to do in life (the 100-list is too personal to put on a website – but I can assure you it was great fun making it!!)

Thanks to Professor Phil Mirvis for great lectures in Pristine Kosovo and for the challenging homework!

Change cannot be tamed

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Wether can't be tamed either... But you can create strategies and readiness for different kinds of weather. Most of the time...

The other week I wrote a paper on implementing a change management program for our course on Change Management at Danube University and our professor Gabriella O’Donovan. This is how I began the paper, by defining what change means to me:

To me change management is a problematic term because it implies that change can be managed and that change comes in singular. My worldview suggest that change is a complex pattern of many small and big fluctuations in the will of individuals and collective masses of people emerging simultaneously, sometimes dependently sometimes seemingly independent of each other.

When you create a change management program you have recognized that people of an organization needs to be educated, inspired and empowered to address a certain change; e.g. to implement a culture of innovation and creativity. But it does not address the fundamentals of change, that change cannot be tamed; that change looks different from different people’s perspectives and that change itself changes.

The new change management program quickly becomes yesterday’s news and falls into oblivion, because there are new changes to address. The change management program just becomes something new to hold on to, because your employees never actually personally learned how to approach change on an individual level. They were only taught to deal with a specific topic; to implement a service culture, a culture of ethics, of innovation or creativity. Whenever you try to maintain the status quo you loose your flexibility and may miss out on the possibility of catching a competitive advantage that could be lurking around the corner.

I believe what you really should do is to build organisations encouraging hunger for change and new solutions, readiness to embrace the moment and challenge given rules and to foster intelligent leadership. Most people would probably gasp for air only by reading this, perhaps imagining a predator feeding of change – for the sake of change. That is not how I see it. I see a vivid, healthy and balanced organisation with huge potential. Perhaps because the contrast is very strong in comparison to most old, rigid, slow organisations that don’t even shiver at the sight of change – because they cannot even recognize it anymore.

Back to here and now. I do believe that change management programs are good – you just have to know exactly why you are doing them – and I would add extra encouragement of embracing change on a higher level – because then and only then can there be real change, and a collection of competitive advantages writing a long and successful history of your organization.

Photo: Wether can’t be tamed either… But you can create strategies and readiness for different kinds of weather. Most of the time… Foto: Evelina Lundqvist, Andaman Islands.

19,5 of 20 in Krems

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Written on Friday during my visit to the University in Krems:

Wow, what an experience. Time for Self Evaluation test at Danube University in Krems, Austria. Me… studying at the university. Not many people would have guessed that. Even I would have called it craziness if you would’ve asked me moths ago. Or even a week ago. And yet, here I am. It never felt more appealing to become a student. I can’t really explain why. Perhaps it’s the universe telling me that this is the right time. Or maybe I just found something really interesting. And to work internationally I need that title. Don’t I?

There were two phases of the Self Evaluation test. English and Economics and Maths. The English test was very difficult, but I think I made it ok. The Economy and Mathematics test was… empty when I handed it in. Except for a few questions where I guessed the answer. Slightly embarrassing, but at the same time there was nothing I could’ve done to change it. Somehow my brain is boiling with excitement. I recognized all the math tasks in the test, I’ve done them before. You know, even I miraculously managed to pass the Mathematics C course in Gymnasiet in Sweden. I just have to awaken the knowledge… It’s in there somewhere. I have to have a look in my old maths books in Sweden. I’m already looking forward to it. The typical task from the test: You pick random balls out of a urn, how high is the probability that the first one is this colour and the second one that colour. No fucking clue actually… And without a calculator I wouldn’t even have time to start trying it. I have to play more Schnappsen with Opa so I learn how to count faster. I really do want to try it! I want to. I want to learn.

A woman is now entering the room with the English test. 19,5 out of 20 points. They’re telling me that’s the highest score they ever had. A small comfort… Keynes, ROI, The invisible hand on the other hand… What is that anyway? Still no idea. But I want to know.