Time to practice (part 1)

Hello guys, I have this story I heard from my dad. A guy who used to be a taxi driver in the 50s. He decided one day to buy some 2 nd hand cars and sell it. This market didn't exist yet in Reunion Island (cars were pretty rare) , he seized the opportunity to build up an empire about cars. I assume, as a taxi driver at this time, he didn't reach high school education / college. Then he should have team up or relentlessly seek and learn as fast as his business grew in every domains. ( law, market, finance, etc...) , I think he also came up with the 3 stages ( 4th not since his business is still private) . So this man must have acquire massive knowledge about business entreupeuneurship spirit, beginning from nothing shows he had DNA but not the means ( material , moneys ) to do it. But He eventually succeeded and that's the amazing part of DNA that did the job... today he sold out most of his cars' business and converted into real estate.

Hello,

here is my contrinbution to "Time to practice" part1.

For sure there are many examples, but it happens that I recently saw "The imitation game", the movie directed by Morten Tydlum on how Enigma was broken during World War II.

So, Enigma was a machine used by the Germans to encipher and decipher secret messages. It was used to communicate strategic and important information between them, like their next targets, or the position of their troops, etc.

Despite many attempts all over the world by the most smarter brains, nobody could break Enigma.

The one who did it was Alan Turing. His approach to break the machine fit the requested example ("watching the world differently, challenging common wisdom, good practices"): instead of trying to understand how worked Enigma, which had led to failure until then, he invented a machine being able to read the messages by trying all the combinations possibly created by Enigma.

He did it despite a huge adversity from both his scientist colleagues (all recognized experts in their domain) and his military hierarchy. But at the end he made it.

Not only he broke Enigma, which helped the Allies to win, but he laid the foundations to what is nowadays well known as the computer !

As said in the movie (which I recommend by the way): "Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine"

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Edité par FrédéricClaude 29 avril 2015 à 11:00:03

Hi Bruno and everyone,

This is my first contribution to the time to practice part of the firt part of the "Decode the entrepreneur's dna" course.

As a an inovative startup that doesn't follow the common sens in entrepreneurship, I see the "The Family" incubator in Paris. It is the case because as an incubator, they don't provide things like coworking spaces or offices to their startups but the transmitted value is in the trainings and the entire framework that they provide to the startups to get them in the right state of mind to build successfull companies. Isn't it guys ?

El. 

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Edité par Ulrichroland201 5 mai 2015 à 4:06:46

Hi everyone!

Thanks Bruno and everyone for all the comments and insights.

For my little practice on part 1, on a smaller scale than what was said so far, I would like to share the story of 2 young men, that attended a business school in France, as so many do.

They started to think about how they could explain what a business does in a very simple yet funny and interesting way.They had the idea of an animation with a real hand drawing onto a paper to explain by simple line drawings what a company does or what something is. You see these videos everywhere now, their slogan being “communiquons simplement”.

They are not animators themselves and took interns to make the animations; they just had the idea and slowly made these videos, and grew into a very successful business called Adesias. How did they look at the world differently? Well not only they seemed to have followed the rules/advises we have seen so far but they have been bold and addressed the corporate world in a funny way!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StGQbFDXhTk

Ah and another thing, I am just thinking about is Trey Parker & Matt Stone J The south park series might not be a business as we are a talking about here but I believe they found a way to put their practical and creative IQ together through analyzing the world we live in.

@ El Roigouny

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was telling me he wants to bring me to “The Family”, I guess I might see you there soon!

Hi every one,

Thank you Bruno for this great and well explained class. This is my contribution to the 1st exercise: 

The exemple of Expliseat which is a story of 3 friends, engineers from 23 to 25 years old who reinvented the seats structure for plane travel. The idea starts from a bad an uncomfortable plane travel in economy class. Realizing that seats used where obsolete. 

They where not trained in this field and took the 1000 page of requirement and normes and start from the blank page with the initial vision of Starck's transparent chair. They reopened theirs physics books, went to school labs and network and start working. They did see the world and the product differently as not being from this industry and therefore able to have a full open mind and exploration spirit.

After 3 years, 600 test,  they created a 4 kg titan seat which is now approved by the Agence européenne de sécurité aérienne (AESA),and Federal Aviation Adminis­tration (FAA) for US. 

The project had also a meaning in terms of environment as using those seats means 5% less carbon emissions per flight. 

Their story is not finished but I was inspired of the way they did start over with a blank page to be sure to not to fall in the old way and industry usage.

Leslie

Hi I am from France,

For me one of the best Entrepreneur's is James Dyson.The founnder of Dyson and the inventor of the cylinder vacuum without bag.

In his beginings,nobody wanted his invention and despite of it he persisted and launch it in Japan.With the money he earned from Japan he built his company in GB.

Since he and his team created and launched a lot of new objects like cooling fans,humidifiers or the famous airblade air dryer.

He founded a foundations to encouraging people to think differently. http://www.jamesdysonfoundation.com/

I thin he is amazing.

Help me please.

I do not understand,i did the second modul but I can't do the quizz.I submited the first quizz.

Dear Mister Martinaud,

How many student enrolled this course?I see 214 but it looks low,doesn't it?

In this last week is there someone here to note my peer-work?

Thanks for your course,it is really interestingand  for me it was particularly a fabulous journey in a creative world.I think you really help me to understand the innovative entrepreneur's Dna. It.It would be interesting if you would provide management course about corporate strategy.But do not hesitate do give more lectures if it is possible. 

I am proud to enroll in a polytechnique course.Pour  la science, la patrie et la gloire!!

Hi!

This is really a great course. Thank you for posting it in OpenClassroom. I certainly hope there will be many more like this one. Opening that kind of knowledge to all is fantastic.

Here is a little error from a sentence from the first quiz, question6: "Because learning works best under constraint, and quick and dirty" The "and quick and dirty" part seems to come from the practical intelligence question, and doesn't really fit in this sentence grammatically.

About the TP n°2, we are expected to give away 50 ideas and then have a peer based correction. If someone had a very good idea, and considering we are almost all programmers in this webpage, it would be quite easy to steal it from him. So I guess that most of us won't dare to propose our main projects in this second part.

For the first week exercise I won't go very far and choose Mathieux Nebra the founder of the Site du Zéro and co-founder of OpenClassroom.

He started the webpage after having read a book on HTML. He though he could explain things in a better way and start his own tutorial. Then he continued doing tutorials and finaly ended up having a lot of traffic thanks to a half-life mod mapping tutorial.

Nothing very special at that point. But what make him the one I choosed for this exercise is all that happened next. He never let his webpage go, convince in the potential of tutorials for beginners. He couldn't get his course published so he decided to make them print himself. The first book was about the C language and was a success. From this prototype he expanded the printing to many other courses and ended up having his book collection in big retailers like "la fnac".

But the real reason why I chose him is for the exit part. When his venture was moving to phase 2, he accepted to step aside from the CEO position of his company and dedicate himself to what he knew best: creating tutorials and managing the webpage, accepting to partner with Pierre Dubuc to expend the website he created when he was 14.

Regards,

Charles

Hi every one, 

Here is my contribution for the "time to practice 1" :

One of the best example of an entrepreneur that challenged common wisdom and see the world differently is Aristide Boucicaut. Most of us know him through "Au Bonheur des Dames, Emile Zola". This french entrepreneur lived in France between 1810 and 1877, he is the founder of "Le bon marché" which was the biggest store of Paris in the 19th century. 

All the modern sales, direct marketing or merchandising techniques come from him. Le Bon marché was a store with a very wide range of products for women, these products came from everywhere in the world and was at low prices. He invented method to valorize products and make women bought them. For example he invented the today well known "satisfied or your money back", he invented the mail-order selling and the sales period. 

Even HR management have been revolutionized by him, he created a company day-nursery for his employees, paid holidays and medical assistance. 

When he died in 1877, "Le bon marché" realized a 71 million turnover. 

Of course there are many more great entrepreneurs today such as "the Paypal Mafia" (Ellon Musk, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman ...), but i think that Aristide Boucicaut was the Steve Jobs of his time and doesn't have the renown he deserves.

I share the skepticism of @cjansen about the TP 2, ideas worth nothing in the worng hand but here are 200 people who have a proactive approach toward entrepreneurship so it is quiet tough to talk about our best ideas ... 

Anyway thank you for this great course !

PS : Sorry for my poor English skill, i am working on it.

Hey,

In part3 it would be nice to add a field with the description of which idea they are assessing. In the two .pdf I had to read, none had the actual description of the idea explained in the comment or anywhere else. I had to try to guess by reading the assessment provided.

Regards,

Charles

Hi everyone,

Personally, my entrepreneur's reference is Oprah Winfrey who were not is the good position at the beginning to succeed : we was a woman and black, and her first boss told her that she wasn't skillful.

But she persisted without saying anything because she saw the weak signal, she knew that she had to wait the good moment and while the time working a lot to be ready,

Thanks a lot Bruno for the lecture,

Amandine/

Hi everyone !

Here's my contribution to the time to practice. (part I)

This idea of “watching the world differently, challenging common wisdom, good practices” reminds me actually of a lot of entrepreuners who had innovative ideas and who were not afraid of being visionary, but the most striking of all is for me Clarence Saunders.This guy failed in the main projects he's known for, but all his ideas and even his methods are very used today.

In the 1920's he created the first shop (called piggly-wiggly) based on the self-service principle's. He's actually known for being pioneer of the supermarkets we're used to seeing, using stickers on products and shelfs to present products to custommers.That was very innovative: Indeed, in 1920, consumer society was not as installed as today, but he suceeded, as he even became in 1929 the second american grocer's shop's chain.

Piggly Wiggly didn't survived to the financial crisis of 1929, but Clarence Saunders had other innovative ideas. A few years later, he tried to create a chain of automatized shops' chain (called Keedoozle). Actually, he was so inovative that he was ahead of his time and he totally failed, Keedoozle went bankrupt, machines couldn't stand the growing demand.He was 50 years ahead of his time !

I encourage you to read his biography on wikipedia ( very interesting : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Saunders_(grocer) )

Hope you enjoyed !

MB

Hi everyone, 

I'd like to share my contribution to the time to practice (part I). 

My entrepreneur's reference is certainly Bruno Lussato, the french founder of the "Wistiki". It's a very simple GPS tracked badge that you can put on your keys or on your computer so that your able to locate it with your iphone in your dailylife. It may looks quite simple but it solves every problems you can have with your keys for example and at a very low cost. 

Thank you for the lecture Bruno,

Pierre Umber

Hey, everyone.

I gotta go with John D Rockefeller. The guy who thought the unthinkable in a time of very limited technological resources. He revolutionized the oil industry, not only by making it available in huge scales, but also by making its transport cheaper (huge pipes accross cities).

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Edité par JairSabino 23 juillet 2015 à 16:46:11

Hi everyone, I'm currently working on the last activity of the mooc, with the framework to complete. I'm afraid I don't catch what you mean with "cost of entry" I'm working on a project of boxes of biological products for well-being you can buy online or you can send to a friend, and I absolutely don't know how to estimate this "cost of entry", I mean : In this cost, do I take into account the wage of the employes working with me ? In this case how many monthes should I take into account ? How can I estimate the cost of my rooms? 

Thx for your help!

Marie

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your interest in this course. I hope you're learning loads of interesting new things.
If you have any technical difficulties, please write to hello@openclassrooms.com. They'll help you solve them in the best possible way.

Thanks and have a great day !

Anouck from OpenClassrooms.

Time to practice (part 1)

Hello everyone,

I think about a couple of friend of mine who created 4 years ago a little enterprise of furniture manufacturer. How 2 young artisans could make it up on a market dominated by heavy industry (like Ikea)? They choose to target a special type of customer by selling 'vintage' furniture.

Every little thing settle the atmosphere of an old, traditionnal craft wich inspires trust (an old workshop in a nice traditionnal house, the way they dress, the colors of their logo and website...), combined to a modern knowledge of design, style, communication technologies...Etc

A nice website, a sympathic name, some products of quality and inventive, and a real service to the client complete that, and their enterprise works very well: they expand, hire and deliver furnitures all over France, Belgium, Swiss, Germany...

Have a good day!

Olivier

TIME TO PRACTICE Part 1

All the free software's because those business's distribute for free their product but they succeed to raise money and survive.

Hi, Everyone to get an Certificate of Achivement , first of all i have to be a  premium member isnt it? As  i have complete the course as an free member , if i update my account latter to premium, could i get the certificate? Thanks!

Time to practice (part 1)

I am thinking of the last m-businesswine offer, that has been launch last June. Olivier Thibert, founded GOOT the first apps that allow you to order your wine on your phone and get it deliver to you in less than 2 hours.

This idea finally answers the lack of offer on m-business for the wine market. Until now, it was only unadapted responsive designed that could partially reply to this need. Even more, the use of the liquor store networks in France to supply the customer demand is so great, I wish I thought of that...

Time to practice - Part 1 :

First of all, happy new year and thanks a lot for the inspiring talks. This confirms some critics I have on the classical Business Plan approach.

The example that I decided to go with may seem out of the entrepreneurs world, but without the "out of the box" thinking of the guy I will be talking about, many inovations would never even exist today. Are you ready to watch the world differently? Here you go :

In fact, for nearly 250 years, Newton was worng about the law of gravity, until an unkowen guy working in the pattent office in switzerland came with a highly controversial theory at that time. Enstein explained simply (through a wonderfull and simple article) that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. This may seem unsignificant to the average people, (who by the way may still think even today that Newton is the father of the law of gravity!), but, the observation Enstein made has changed the history of physics and brough quantum mechanics into life. In fact, if your GPS works today, it's because of the Different Thinking of this guy. Amazing! isn't it.

Are you gonna be the next Business Ensteins folks ? Probably YES !

To learn more on the subject, here is a short 7minutes video from youtube :

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6MJ0lTEhoL8

Nice week end to every one.

Achraf

Hello everyone,  

I am Andréa from France. Thank you for the course. 

I consider that one of the examples of a successful entrepreneur is Fredéric Mazzella the founder pf blablacar in France (2012). He has challenged the well-established means of transportation in that country by thinking them in another way. Concretely, he has identified a problem. That problem was the lack of places in trains for people traveling through the country while lots of owners of cars were driving their own empty cars for doing the same travel. His idea was to create a net that permit the travelers looking for a place to get in contact drivers looking for people to drive so that they could be paid a little and to partially or totally refund the expenses related to gas, etc. in the travel. His strategy was entirely constructed the web. According to the public official figures, Blablacar counts today 35 million members, it exists in 22 different countries in Europe and in Latin-American and deals with 12 million travelers every three months.

Andrea

This topic is very interesting and I am interested but do not know where to find, thankfully you create this topic, hope everyone will help me run 3

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Edité par lorrio 19 avril 2021 à 20:52:27