Are buoyant minds of large companies entrepreneurial thinkers? — Reflections of the Startup Boot Camp
25 young talents from companies in One JAPAN came together for the “Startup Boot Camp” event, which was led by companies, Fujitsu and Nomura Research Institute (NRI).
This was an ambitious event — a challenge to its participants to form teams, develop a business idea, create a mock-up and validate the idea… all within a timeframe of 54 hours.
Many large companies lately are seeking new business opportunities and it is not unusual for such projects to involve young talent within the organization. However, this was an event for a bunch of people with different backgrounds with no common interests — it was questionable whether it was even possible to generate an idea that satisfies all.
Yutaro Nagata and I, Tomoya Yoshida participated in this event from McCANN MILLENNIALS. This article is a reflection on the chemistry I saw happen within the team and what I felt being part of this event.
What is the “Startup Boot Camp”?
The Startup Bootcamp was an event held over one weekend, led by young members of Fujitsu and NRI.
Rumor says that this event started from a chat at a drinking party where people shared their passion and enthusiasm to do something different and interesting. (The trigger may have been a light-hearted chat over beer, but I assume there was a lot of heavy lifting to get the event implemented.)
Many of the participants were from Fujitsu and NRI, but enthusiasts from big companies such as NTT East Japan, Japan Post, NTT Docomo, Aflac, and Toshiba were also there, willing to give up their weekends to do something great.
DAY-1: Straight into it
19:00 p.m. Friday, 10th of March. The enthusiastic participants gathered at “HAB-YU,” Fujitsu’s co-creation space in Arkhills. The participants had to bring one business idea mapped on a concept board to the event, so we went immediately into the 1-minute idea pitching session to sell-in our ideas to this fascinating bunch.
Presentation, then into teams
Once everyone finished their presentation, each participant was given 3 votes that they can give to the presentation they found most interesting, and then were instructed to stand by the idea they want to work on.
5 ideas were selected though this process.
The idea that attracted the most votes was, “Please give me that seat,” a service to help people ask for a seat on trains. However, it was not selected as one of the 5 winning ideas, as not many people selected it as their idea they wanted to participate in. It is interesting to see that a popular idea is not necessarily the idea people wanted to do.
Just for your reference, my proposal was a program to improve long-term engagement of mid-career recruits. When I asked the audience if anybody had changed jobs before, only 3 raised their hands and the idea just didn’t seem to click with this bunch. (Obviously big company employees don’t need to job-hop!)
Are the buoyant minds of big companies entrepreneurial thinkers?
There was a bit of back-and-forthing trying to break down into teams, but we all finally landed where we thought we belonged.
Mr. Fujimori from NTT was leading the team I joined. Our topic was, “Evolving individual work into project-type work.”
This may sound conceptual, but our hypothesis was that if work were a project rather than something instructed from the company, people might feel more ownership over what they do as a professional.
Many people in the room commented that big companies make their employees do a lot of project management, which they felt was insufficient as a professional skill and lacked in expertise.
Ways of working is changing, but our team believed that to truly breakthrough these traditions, it was necessary to step out of the framework of a company, and think of a completely new business model.
Closing up on day 1: Allocated to teams and topic selected
Once our topic was set, we called it a day and our team went for some drinks. After all, team building is always important. We talked about everything and anything all night. “I want to start a business, but I can’t quit work since I live in a company-owned house and the pay’s relatively good.” “There are various types of start-ups. Many are technology focused, but some have been successful in resolving social issues just by building a powerful story.” “Are there any skills that even new employees can contribute to?”
DAY-2: Identifying the problem and brainstorming the solution
The next day started with a presentation from the organizers regarding the importance of team building and the framework to develop a business plan.
User interviews, empathy maps, How might we Question, value proposition canvas, prototyping, lean canvas, etc. etc.
All of these sounded familiar or I could recall them as jargon I saw in textbooks, but obviously used scarcely in the actual field. And we thought we were seasoned business professionals. Chuckles.
Listening to instructions of these tools and theories, I thought our service could be easily defined once the value proposition canvas was completed, and from there we should be able to complete the lean canvas. These are tools are proven business tools. But alas, our team jumped into a long and chaotic debate from there.
Attempts to identifying a clear problem
Our team went straight to work and all of us whipped up several ideas through a brainstorming process. However, once we hit the discussions, even if an idea that sounded great and plausible at first, it no longer appeared attractive once we started to question it. We could not agree on an idea!
The reason why we were stuck there simply was because the problem was not clearly defined.
It took us almost all of day 2 for us to notice this simple yet fundamental issue. By this time, the clock had past 10pm…
Of course, that does not mean that our discussion throughout the entire day was meaningless. Numerous ideas were shared and tossed around the table.
However, it was difficult to identify a robust idea that was aspirational and entrepreneurial, which can be launched with a small start. There were some attempts to drive the debate to “constructive” conclusions, but we quickly stopped doing that, noticing that the discussions became shallow and cheap.
Our team was completely lost, unable to reach any conclusions on what was a good idea. In the afternoon, we were able to discuss our hypothetical problems and solutions with an advisor who has rich experience in starting up a business, but this opened up more questions such as, “There are other similar services. What is particular about this service?” “Who will want to pay for this?”
We were not able to provide clear answers to these questions, which indicated that we have not been able to establish a robust hypothesis.
Downhearted by our progress, we asked the other teams about their progress at the networking session held at the end of the day, and to our surprise found that other groups were also stuck in a similar situation. None of us never expected identifying an unsolved problem and developing a solution that will benefit both the provider and user could be so difficult…
Strengths of a Corporate Business Person = Their Weakness
Through the various discussions, we could see that corporate workers have positive traits and strengths but may not always be powerful entrepreneurial thinkers.
It seems like our discussions hit dead-ends very quickly. We were all quick in coming up with abstract ideas and general directions, but was unable to distill that to actionable, specific solutions.
DAY-3: Count-down till Presentation Time
The clocked mercilessly ticked by while we scratched our heads and the time to present our ideas was creeping up.
If this were a company training session, I might have just summarized the discussion and pull together a conclusion that sounds somewhat credible, but that was a no-go here. No one here was ready to cut corners.
Last minute rush
Using the morning of the final day, we tried once again in defining the “Problem to be solved” by starting with the question of, “If we were to start something together, what can we do?”
I was first skeptical on how far we could go considering we had only 5 hours left until presentation, but we found that we actually had all the ingredients in front of us, and by solidifying the problem, our story became clear.
To our objective of, “Establishing a project-based approach,” we identified that the problem we had to solve was, “What is the platform that will enable project-type work?”
As we had little time to pull our presentation together, we built our business framework using another existing service as a guide and added our hypothesis.
Things progressed impressively quickly from there. We assigned different parts of the presentation to each team member — developing the structure of the service model, calculation of projected revenue, mock-up development and persona building. We quickly pulled all parts together within an hour in preparation for the presentation.
Overview of each team’s presentation
The following is a rough overview of the new services ideas presented at the end of the event. (Some ideas may become actual business, so I’m not going to provide the details)
w@eat
A service that delivers the voices of farmers to the consumer. People may have experience talking to the chef at a restaurant, but this service uses information technology to deliver the voices of the producers of the ingredients to the dinner table. This may sound like a typical idea, but the team leader was passionate about making this happen, and this idea won the votes of the judges.
One Piece
This was our team’s idea. A platform that facilitates project-level work. The platform will enable corporate workers who want to try something different on the side to their regular job to participate in projects of their interest. The difference with existing service, Lancers, is the fact that the available projects will not always be remunerated monetarily. The service will allow people who are interested in building a business to offer others who are interested in the same area an opportunity of participation.
WAST
An idea developed a by a team which involved members who developed the idea, “Please give me that seat.” This platform, developed through a deep debate, enables people to offer their seat to another person for a small amount of money — something much needed when you are desperate to sit down. The judges questioned the team how this service will collaborate with the train companies, but I personally felt that this idea has potential as it may resolve the over-booking problem that airline companies usually struggle with.
OOO125
A service that helps you find a buddy when you don’t have anything to do. The service matches users together according to their needs. Personally, I tend to keep myself quite busy on weekends so I don’t think I am a target user of this service, but obviously employees of large companies have lonely weekends — only joking. This will be a nice service to have if I wanted to try something new with someone or find a friend to spend time with on days off.
Sandwich Concierge
Considering the rise in conflict between local and foreigner residents in apartment buildings, this is a service that offers resolution to such disputes in replace of property management companies. There probably are many barriers to implementation as the idea was designed to leverage LINE, but the demand for such service is imagined to be high.
Reflections & Summary
In simple terms, I was quite impressed with how much can be covered in less than 3 days.
Each business idea presented was at different depths of thinking, but it was eye opening to see the numerous opportunities within each idea, which could open up just by changing perceptions.
I mentioned earlier that it is difficult to develop a professional skill-set in large companies and that the current work lacked in expertise, but it seemed like us corporate workers are quite skilled generalists who can select appropriate information and tools from a rich source — this is definitely a skill that can be further exploited. If entrepreneurial thinking can be added to this existing skill, it may generate something new and great — that is the feeling that crossed my mind.
If a seasoned corporate businessperson can acquire an entrepreneurial mindset though trainings such as this, that may generate a new skill that can identify opportunities to marriage ideas.
3 Days finding a “Problem”
Over the 3 days, our team was haunted by the question, “What is the problem to be solved?” We now know the importance of identifying a clear problem to solve. The problem is an opportunity, and we should be questioning and looking for these opportunities all the time.
Although this may sound stupidly common sense, I truly felt that a solution cannot be found unless a problem is clear.
Discussion etiquette can build a strong team
When working on a problem as a group, I found that the relationship within the team is crucial for success
If you become too passionate and don’t choose your words, it is difficult to build a relationship of trust. On the other hand, if you try to respect every little bit of input from everyone, the discussion stagnates.
Our team figured that most of this can be solved with little “Conversational” tricks. Our team discussed some tips on having “Effective discussions.”
Here are some of them:
- Avoid using definitive statements in discussions. Phrases such as, “Could that be…” or “This may be another way to look at things, but how about…” will help expand the idea while letting other members into the idea.
- Rather than dreaming big, find a robust entry point into the existing industry regardless of its size and try solving the problem from there.
- When the discussion becomes conceptual, try paraphrasing to simple words and note them down on a post-it.
- When people question your idea, defend your idea with whatever you can think of. (Excuses can become great rationales)
- Don’t kill ideas. Question “How” than “Why.”
Learnings from discussion mapping
The following are words from Mr. Yano from Fujitsu regarding “How to have successful discussions,” which is one step beyond “Discussion etiquettes.”
It seems like your group had moments where you lost track of the main point you were trying to discuss. May be it’s important for everyone to learn to toss around ideas while knowing where you need to land?
When identifying a problem, or discussing a solution, it’s important for everyone to raise their thoughts, expand on other people’s ideas and to enjoy the process of ideation.
Then you need to effectively identify what is relevant to the objective.”
Based on this advice, our team was able to focus on a problem that can be solved with a small start with a feasible solution.
Regardless of how far a discussion has progressed, the nature of the conversation remains constructive if the whole team is aligned with what needs to be discussed and determined, (However it’s extremely hard to get that alignment!)
It will be very useful in any business situation to have a discussion map. It governs the “live discussion” and can be updated real-time according to the direction the discussion is heading to.
Mr. Fujimori, who was our team moderator, also made some comments.
This team was successful in sharing a vision, but there was a variation in the way each person perceived the problem or the solution, which made complicated the discussions.
Although you all are employees of relatively large organizations, there were big differences between the accustomed incentives, working styles, time management practices. This changed the way you all perceived the problem, and that blinded you from sharing a solution.
The discussions became quite heated because the scale of the problem and solution was not aligned — that may be the reason why it was difficult to reach a conclusion.
It’s important to progress a discussion while cross-checking with the team the level of the problem constantly to avoid ambiguity and to reach tangible conclusions. The ironic thing is, most teams first need to vent to actually get to that alignment.
So deep. In other words, even if it may seem like we’re discussing the same thing, there is a chance that each speaker has a different level of understanding and expectations. We thought we already knew that, but we tend to forget that in our daily conversations.
Resolution may be difficult. Perhaps the speaker should start by stating something like, “This is my comment regarding this particular point from the discussion map.” Just to make sure we’re aligned with what is being suggested and discussed.
So, that is all with my personal reflections and the barriers I felt as a corporate worker taking part in a start-up workshop for the first time. If anything in this article was inappropriate, I apologize for that and ask you to contact us so we can fix it.
I would like to thank the event organizers and the participants for the valuable 3 day experience. Our team currently is not taking action to implement the idea, but I look forward to seeing someone from this event start-up his or her own business one day.
