Juana-Catalina Rodriguez

Entrepreneurship

Disruptive Innovation Borders

7 Lessons From How Borders Group Failed To Unsettle Disruption

5 April 2022 No Comments

And how companies should take the competition seriously and be willing to make changes when necessary. Falling off a perch is not a pleasant feeling for an individual or a company. However, falling is a trait among warriors, and rising after a fall is a hobby for champions. For this to happen, an individual or a company needs to be sitting right up to the pile of all other competitors for several years to lose track and fall so hard that the company usually ends up in a bankruptcy file. I love bookstores, and visiting Borders at its time was

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Seven Stunning Lessons From How Toys “R” Us Failed To Handled Disruption

29 March 2022 No Comments

Why do some companies not see disruption coming while others harness the power of disruptive innovation? I remember my first visit to a Toys “R” Us store in New York. I was impressed with their product endcaps, massive inventory, and spectrum of merchandise. In the end, nostalgia couldn’t save them. Instead, the once-mighty retailer struggled to keep up with changing consumer trends, environment, and technology. As a result, the company lost $2.4 billion in 2017 and filed for bankruptcy in September 2018. Like Toys “R” Us, Blockbuster, and many other entrepreneurs, we see more companies missing the disruptive innovation opportunity

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Seven Surprising Lessons From How Blockbuster Failed To Handled Disruption

22 March 2022 No Comments

A cautionary tale of a business that failed to identify that they were being disrupted “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.” –Bill Gates Falling off a perch is not a pleasant feeling for an individual or a company. However, falling is a trait among warriors, and rising after a fall is a champion’s hobby. For this to happen, an individual or a company needs to be sitting right up to the pile of all other competitors for several years to lose track and fall so hard that the company usually ends up in

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Why All The Innovation Fuss About Ideas. Innovation Requires Much More Than That

4 January 2022 No Comments

While some make no distinction between good ideas and innovation, there are several pit stops in an entrepreneurship journey. Global and local markets are becoming highly saturated and volatile. This increased competition and changes in consumer behavior have pushed businesses to innovate within their realm. Yet, when talking about finding ways to make a difference, most companies believe that the answer to innovation lies in brainstorming more ideas. According to the Massachusetts Institute Technology experts, innovation can be defined as the “process of taking an idea from inception impact.” While simplistic, this definition truly captures the gist of innovation and helps differentiate

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Top 3 Techniques to Develop Your Storytelling Skills

3 October 2021 No Comments

At seven years old, I wrote my first story, a 2-page guide for my little brother to teach him the ABC. At 14 years old, I crafted my teenage fears and adventures in a journal with the dream that it may become a book one day. Then, I enjoy reading too many stories from fantastic authors. Since I got my first computer, I keep a folder crafting ideas and fragments of my personal and work experiences. Then, two years ago, I started a compelling routine of not only drafting a few words on a journal every day but giving them

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Out of ideas? 3 Proven Tips To Unleash Your Creativity To The Next Level

10 August 2021 No Comments

It was a dusky afternoon. I was having a coffee with my friend, and we were discussing my next innovation project. The challenge was how we could improve the in-store user experience by connecting online and offline worlds. It was 2007, and at that time, Amazon Go was nowhere on the map. I was excited to share what was on my mind — the Amazon-like experience of combining physical and digital elements to enhance user experience phenomenally by using smartphones. I rambled on with the details, describing some loose ends and unrealistic goals with the project that our team had thought

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Entrepreneurship-Journey

The Top Three Tips to Jump-Start Your Entrepreneurship Journey

31 July 2021 No Comments

Kick-off to start from today, and be ready to fail, iterate, and repeat. I remember our first mentee call with Joe. He was enthusiastic; he had been dreaming about starting his own business for years. He had a lot of ideas to tell and was quite proud of his creativity flow. Belonging to an engineering background, he described solutions using blockchain, augmented reality, and Artificial Intelligence. I appreciated him for his imagination and enthusiasm. It was a good sign. I then asked him to tell me the problems that he was solving with all these solutions. He was stopped short at that. Silence

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The art of asking, from time to time we all need a little help

8 September 2020 5 Comments

Some years ago, I had an excellent unplanned asking experience as part of negotiation training. The mission was to venture out and asking for a discount on anything, ranging from buying a coffee cup from Starbucks or a product at the local supermarket. The key to the proposition here was to ask for something that nobody expected. I come from a country where negotiation is very common. As a little girl, I always used my mother’s customers on the lookout for a discount in her store in Colombia. In some regions, asking for a discount may be an expected norm,

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Britt, serial Intra and entrepreneur up-close and upfront on how she is managing change and innovation

17 June 2020 No Comments

In this interview, we have the opportunity to pick the brains of a brilliant intrapreneur and serial entrepreneur. Her name is  Maj-Britt Kjær Sørensen, she lives and works in Denmark. She has several feathers in her cap that includes changing companies through innovation (on the inside-out), teaching intrapreneurship at a school, and working as a consultant for change management and innovation. Our paths crossed on the Stanford LEAD program last year and now she is a full-time agent of corporate change. She is also a serial entrepreneur at heart with a solid background in marketing and innovation. She had the

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10 key strategies to help entrepreneurs fight through the COVID-19 crisis

28 April 2020 No Comments

Just a few days into the lockdown, I got a call from Sophie, she was furious and frustrated as she has been working for the last year to develop a wonderful “atelier” to share her passion for handcrafts. Her place was just launched in January, but after less than 1 month of operations, everything was suddenly stopped. On another side, there was a touch of mixed feelings as she was also thankful to be safe at home with her family in these uncertain times. During the first two weeks of the lockdown, Sophie was dumbstruck, as a solo entrepreneur she

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