6th Annual Entrepreneurship Luncheon, Rochester NY
Victor Hwang of T2 Venture Creation and author of The Rainforest, recently visited Rochester, NY to speak at the 6th Annual Entrepreneurial Celebration Luncheon. As he stated, “Upstate, NY has tremendous DNA of innovation and entrepreneurship.” Below we share some of our “cliff notes”:
“This was the Silicon Valley a century ago,” said Victor. All of this “stuff” (the DNA to create the next Silicon Valley) is already here; it’s in the DNA of Upstate. “Why is it not happening now you ask? It’s a wall of the mind.”
According to Victor, we need to ask ourselves the following:
What makes Silicon Valley tick?
What made us tick before? How do we get it back again?
Evolution of innovation 20 years ago- Technical innovation 10 years ago- Business model innovation Present day- Cultural innovation
Culture drives everything else. Culture is invisible. We/You must build something tangible out of something invisible. Unlike a farm, where we plant certain crops and expect those crops to grow, in the rainforest everything is unexpected. Emerging unpredictable systems. The weeds are sprouting up all the time inside the ecosystem of a rainforest. Things that we are currently planting are expected like the crops on a farm. This expectation of what we plant prohibits the “weeds” or the one off growth of all the healthy ideas, businesses, groups and communities to flourish. The weeds that we don’t expect to pop up are in fact the growth.”
Silicon Valley is not a place. It is a mindset. Did they know in advance what it looked like before they sat down? No they didn’t. We must create states of mind. With all of the activity already taking place in Upstate, the mindset is already present. So let’s continue to build upon this, celebrate all of the successes and failures, as well as measure the ongoing success.
Victor listed 7 rules of the rainforest that allow for the “weeds” to emerge and grow into thriving businesses:
1. Break rules and dream
2. Open doors and listen
3. Trust and be trusted- extend trust first and give it to those before you get it back
4. Seek fairness, not advantage
5. Experiment and celebrate together
6. Err, fail and persist
7. Pay it forward
Share your thoughts with us and the rest of the Upstate community in the comments section below!
By: Jonathan Grutka
@jonathan_grutka
