Last week, on a regular afternoon, I received an unexpected visit. As I opened the door, I saw a man in his mid 50’s. He was wearing a blue cap and appeared to have old clothes on. The look on his face was weird, different. I couldn’t read his expression; he didn’t seem happy nor angry. This man was Alex.
Alex was the bread supplier for BombZ*. Originally, he produced only two types but agreed to produce one more for our business. He certainly was not just a baker, he was key to our business. We aimed to transmit his story, connect and benefit the privileged and unprivileged ones with just one bomb. By buying our bread from Alex, we were adding value to his life and to others’ lives by offering his product. Right after I said, “Hi Alex, what brings you here?” He answered, “I am very sorry young lady, but I cannot work for you. I do not have enough interest in producing the type of bread you asked for and wouldn’t like to let you down.” Once in a while, we face some situations that block our minds and make us think that it is all over. When this happens, the best thing to do is step back, take a breath and adapt to make it work. A couple of days ago, I didn’t know that this is what should be done in these situations. Without fully understanding the reason for his withdrawal, I respected his decision and let him go. Not knowing what to do or how to react to this situation, I immediately called my two BombZ colleagues, Chiara and Frances. They freaked out. I quickly got infected with the same feeling. The only thing crossing my mind over and over again was that the protagonist of our project quit, which meant that we had lost a crucial part of BombZ, one that was extremely difficult to replace. After thinking and discussing with many colleagues for hours about ideas to convince Alex to work with us again, we realised that we couldn’t pressure him to do so. We decided to take a step back and look at the problem with an open mind, with the hope of finding the perfect solution. The first thing we did was go out to find a replacement for Alex. We spent a whole morning driving around Lima and asking many bakers if they would be willing to work with us. Their answers can be summarised in two types. Either they weren’t interested in working with us or their price was too high, which wouldn’t allow us to sell it for a decent price or would decrease our profit significantly. Then, we started to think of alternative stories that could be added to our business. After considering having somebody make the breads just so that we could tell his story, we realised that we weren’t thinking effectively anymore. And so we began to freak out again. Everything seemed like a complete failure. While sitting down in class, desperate and disappointed, I thought of asking an outsider for help. We explained the whole story to the substitute teacher and his response was, “What’s the story of the other businesses?” His words completely changed our perspective on the situation. We realised that although having a story would make our business stand out, it didn’t have to be that story. And forcing one at that point wouldn’t result in a better business, but a fake one. We want BombZ to be purposeful and valuable. We understand the power of stories, and how having one could take our business to the next level, becoming more successful. That is why we have decided that a story could and should be added later on, when purposeful. For example, having members of our community help us prepare the bombz and reward them with some afterwards. Allowing people to participate in our business would add value to their lives and to the rest of our audience as well. This is just an example we thought about, but we plan to keep brainstorming along the way to add as much value as possible to the people in our community. The positive and most important thing about our decision is that we are on the same page about the values of our business: purposeful work and transparency. *BombZ is the name of our business, and our product is fresh bread filled with hazelnut cream. For the Innovation Academy Entrepreneurship unit, we are starting a business from scratch, building a brand and a team. We are learning about Entrepreneurship by working with and acting like entrepreneurs.
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March 2017
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