A gala with entrepreneurial and transformative overtones

El pasado 20 de octubre, se celebró en el paraninfo de la Universidad de Deusto la Gala de On 20 October, the Deusto-Santander Entrepreneurship Gala was held in the auditorium of the University of Deusto, hosted by Garbiñe Henry, director of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit (IEU) of the University of Deusto. One of its objectives was to recognize the more than 1,400 participants of the various training courses offered by the IEU of the University of Deusto, and promoted by Deusto Emprende and Banco Santander through Santander Universities. These include creaction!, DeustoSTART I, DeustoSTART II, Practicum Emprende, and the Deusto Emprende Week which, by the way, started on Monday.

In addition to having the privilege of attending the Gala, being able to participate in their programmes is a real honour (I can’t deny it, and I recognise that part of my heart is still in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Unit).

Today I want to share with all of you some of the recommendations shared by one of the star guests, Hasier Larrea, founder and CEO of Ori, “a robotic furniture startup that reinvents spaces”.

Hasier is considered by many to be one of the success stories of Basque entrepreneurship, so I hope his recommendations help you, as they are helping me.

  1. Fall in love with the problem.
  2. Surround yourself with the best, feel small, that is how we learn.
  3. Learn continuously because the world is constantly changing.
  4. Talk to people, understand their problems, and compete against luck.
  5. Persevere, be stubborn, plan, be flexible in tactics.
  6. Lead, listen to the other person (even if you are the last to speak), cooperate with your own team, apply the formula “Know How, Do How, and Know How“.
  7. If you have to “fail”, then fail and move on, but “Never underestimate the heart of an entrepreneur” and believe in yourself.
  8. People will remember very well how you finished, but not how you started, that’s why you have to know how to manage your exits very well.
  9. “Working on something we like is passion, working on something we don’t care about is stress”. Find your own Ikigai and strike a balance between work, family, health, friends, and soul.
  10. Life is about collecting moments that make us smile.

As Hasier said:

Entrepreneurship is about transforming education, medicine, architecture, in short, transforming the world.

Thank you for following there.

Desafío +

I must admit that feeling loved by Desafío + (Desafío Más or Challenge Plus) has been one of the most “beautiful” moments and one of the things that have given me more on a personal and professional level during this weird and painful year of 2020.

I’m going to tell you why, so, if you want, you only have to keep reading.

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The keys of a good leadership, also for entrepreneurs

In the school year of 1993-94, as soon as I finished the Pedagogy studies and I got a diploma in Education of Leisure, I applied for the Young Leaders Fellowship scholarship of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Foundation. The goal was to make a research project that allowed me to lay the foundation of what my future doctoral thesis would be while I started working at the Leisure Studies Institute of the University of Deusto, founded in 1988 in the heart of the then Faculty of Philosophy and Education Science. Then started a long journey that’s still going, which I’m very aware of, and that made me work today at the Faculty of Psychology and Education of the University of Deusto, developing at least two of my biggest passions: teaching, with everything that implies; and the promotion of entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial person – especially the teacherpreneur – and their training.

Do not worried, today’s post is not about my story, it is about leadership. Do you want to keep reading? You don’t? Then you’ll miss something; you do? Keep reading. (more…)

The 20 characteristics of the entrepreneur

I admit that the time between this post and the last one has been longer than before. Unfortunately, sometimes life asks you to relax and calm down a little bit. It has been what has happened to me. This time, due to the lack of time to write the posts as entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship deserve I have decided to write every two weeks more or less. The most important thing is that I am here and I am back writing about what I think it is more than worthy. Hello again.

Para aquellas personas que me habéis preguntado en más de una ocasión que es eso de la P.E., aprovecho este “primer” post de vuelta de las vacaciones para refrescar estas siglas.

For those who have asked me more than once what E.P. (in Spanish) means, I’ll take this “first” post back from holidays to refresh this acronym.

In order to answer propely, I’ve been gathering the adjectives and ideas that I’ve been using in the different posts and which, from my point of view, define the E (entrepreneurial) P (person), this is, the entrepreneur. It is very important to highlight that every single entrepreneur does no have all those qualities, values or characteristics in general at the same time and/or at a high level. After all, we can’t forget that we aren’t talking about a superman or superwoman, but about people, with capital letters in my opinion: PEOPLE. (more…)

Tone up your finances with Fintonic

Do you know how much money you have now? What are you wasting it on? What are your banks charging you? Or just, how can you manage it better? Probably, if you had Fintonic you could answer these questions with just pressing a button.

If you’re interested, I’ll tell you that Pablo Luis Uriarte, former managing director and vice president of BBVA, Carina Szplika, former managing director of ING España, and Javier Marín, former managing director of Banco Santander, are just a few people who have decided to invest in Fintonic. Why would that be?

If you want to know what is Fintonic, I encourage you to keep reading. You’ll discover the app for which the big powers of the financial world, banking and the investment are betting. Are you in? (more…)