Starting to spread the word about our research

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Evelina Lundqvist

I’m very excited to announce that we (as in Michael Bauer-Leeb and I) are preparing to go out and talk about our research on facilitating business relationships between social entrepreneurs and business angels.

This is what I dreamt about all last year, during the reading and writing, to tell people about our findings. And perhaps more importantly – to engage in dialogue on how to develop the sphere of social entrepreneurship. And definitely most important – to conduct better business in order to take better care of ourselves and our planet.

Here are some of the topics we’re going to talk about.

What is social entrepreneurship (and why it is so difficult to define), and its role in the currently changing economic paradigms.
How to enhance communication between social entrepreneurs and investors and increase social entrepreneurs’ chances of finding an investor.
Differences between social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship.
How can my business benefit from including social and environmental, along side profit seeking in the core business.

Mapping my mind

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Evelina Lundqvist

I’m a huge fan of making mind-maps. I’m also a fan of my mac and of apps like MindNode. At The Good Tribe we’ve used MindNode for the master’s thesis and for brainstorming business ideas.

This time I’ve used it to structure my thoughts on what in business life tends to draw my attention and in which direction I’d like to move. I’ve published it here for your inspiration. Click on the image to see it bigger.

I’m not sponsored by MindNode or anything. I just happen to like the app :)

This is where I am!

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Evelina Lundqvist

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

Posted on February 7, 2010 by Evelina Lundqvist

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.

Evelina Star / Evelina Lundqvist

Tag Archives: My academic stuff

Mapping my mind

This is where I am!

Change cannot be tamed