And Venus Genius was born…
This kicks off an article series about Part one of my book: Venus Genius: The Female Prescription for Innovation. Part one describes “How we got here”, exploring innovation through the feminine lens.
It was a gloomy afternoon in January 2020. I was sitting on my sofa, experiencing the down phase of the well-known entrepreneur emotional roller coaster. I distractedly opened a LinkedIn message. It was from Tanya Alvarez, a young woman I had met in December at a neighbor’s Christmas party who expressed interest in my newly launched business. She was asking how the business was doing. As I answered honestly, she kindly offered to talk. After a while, she said: “You need to write a book.”
Now you can just imagine me rolling my eyes and thinking, “Here we go again!” Many of my friends have been telling me the same thing for years, and now also people I have just met.
Well, I am a talker, but I am not a writer. I don’t like to write, I am not skilled at it, and English is not my first language. Plus, I am a rebel, so the more somebody tells me to do something, the more I resist… until the day I decide to do it.
Tanya found the way to change my mind, arguing that the book would be a wonderful way to showcase my experience. “Huh?” I thought. I really wanted that but was not completely sold to the idea. This is when she revealed her “silver bullet”: a 20-week process that was based on research and community. She knew I was a scientist and loved to work with people, so she had pressed the right buttons. She connected me to Eric Koester, a professor from Georgetown who created this “Book Creators” program.
I was immediately seduced by Eric’s passion and thought that I would learn so much and gather meaningful information in the process. The rest is history. This is how we are here today.
As the title may be misinterpreted, I want to make a key statement: this book is not only for women, it is not about women vs men, this not even about gender. It is about celebrating the duality of the feminine and the masculine in all human beings and making sure we activate both energies to create innovation that brings true value to our world.
It just happens that in general, due to biological and cultural influences; women tend to have a bigger feminine side and men a stronger masculine side, and that the world has been mainly driven by masculine energy. There is a trend in rebalancing those differences with gender fluidity, but as of today, we cannot just ignore gender, this is our history and our society. As a scientist, I cannot discard facts, this is why I will have to make gendered statements and advocate for gender equality in innovation.
“After all, feminism did a pretty good job of showing that women can do what men do. What we haven’t achieved is showing that men can do what women do.” — Jessamyn Neuhaus.
I hope you’ll enjoy this journey exploring the world of innovation through a feminine lens, the mysteries of the masculine and feminine brains — if such entities exist — as well as some juicy anecdotes of women’s daily lives in a world designed by men. We finish with a description of the feminine innovation framework: how to unlock your feminine traits and create meaningful and sustainable innovation, wherever you stand on the masculine-feminine continuum.
Over the next weeks, I’m going to be sharing excerpts and stories from Part one of my book, Venus Genius in this article series. Venus Genius launched on December 7, 2020 on Amazon, here is the link to buy it: https://lnkd.in/dXbs_WK! If you want to connect, you can reach me here via email: contact@innoveve.com or connect with me on social: www.linkedin.com/in/fabienne-jacquet — https://www.facebook.com/innoveveLLC — @innoveveLLC.
