Necessity Is the Mother of Invention:
Entrepreneurism and Design Thinking in Cuba
One of the most beautiful things about life is that if you open yourself up to possibility, those possibilities will come. After an amazing trip to Cuba this past April, during which I met many local entrepreneurs, including the inimitable Marta Deus (Founder and CEO of Deus Expertos Contables, Negolution, and Mandao Express), I said I would go back in six months’ time. In fact, it was five months, three weeks, and two days. Little did I know that two people whom I met within this calendar year would become so important to me, not just as partners in what might have seemed an impossible undertaking, but more importantly as friends and confidants.
Over 28–30 October, Marta, Samantha Stein (Founder and CEO of Hacktivision), and I led a design thinking workshop for Cuban entrepreneurs at the Dutch Embassy in Havana. It was the first event of its kind on the island, and we will forever be grateful to those who helped make it possible: Yahoo!, the Embassy of the Netherlands in Cuba, the Delegation of the European Union to Cuba, and Cuba Educational Travel. As well as the mentors who travelled with us to Havana for the event, and, of course, the participants themselves.
When I first read Adam Popescu’s article in TechCrunch about the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cuba, I knew I wanted to find ways to build bridges between them and my home of San Francisco. Intention can be a particularly powerful tool and within a half hour of tweeting at Adam that I was leading a group World Economic Global Shapers to Cuba in April and we wanted to meet entrepreneurs on the island, he had connected me with Hiram Centelles, Co-Founder of Revolico (Cuba’s version of Craigslist) and Fonoma. The morning after Thanksgiving, Hiram and I had our first meeting over Google Hangout. Thank you, Hiram, for taking that call. Little did we know what would become of it!
One of my teachers once told me that even the most random events are not so random, once you start looking at the threads they weave. In this case, it is crazy to think that a friendship begun less than a year ago via video chat, with someone I never met in person until the end of October, could be beget so much.
The event was by all accounts a huge success. Our goal was to foster community and facilitate a new way of problem-solving. And, recognizing that a start-up can be focused on much more than technology, we entrepreneurs whose projects ranged from a Cuban intranet version of LinkedIn (CubaEmpleo) to furniture design (Vibra Studio) to an app for all your food wants and needs (ALaMesa) to a film production company (mo-san Films) to advertising agencies (HIGHVISTA and ArtPrint) to a courier service (Mandao Express). You get the picture. The entrepreneurial ecosystem in Cuba is rich with diversity, and a grit that would impress any Silicon Valley investor.
Over the course of the weekend, we ran through various design thinking exercises to further develop the entrepreneurs’ networking, business development, and pitching skills. To compliment this, we had presentations on pitching, technology for good, social entrepreneurship; mentorship sessions; and a live demo of UpStart a new board game specifically designed to take players through the process of starting their own business. All day Sunday, the entrepreneurs participated in a team-based challenge to design a tool of some kind that would enable them to better collaborate.
The winning team pitched a platform for entrepreneurs to share their knowledge and experience with others, designed to address what they see as a lack of learning and collaboration. Worth noting is that two of the five teams designed some kind of coworking space. The other two projects were an offline internet of all things and what would essentially be a Cuban version of Venmo.
As the sun waned on Sunday, we gathered in a circle in the back garden of the Dutch Embassy. Each person had the opportunity to say something they had learned over the course of the weekend and to name someone they hoped to collaborate with in the future. There were multiple teary moments, and I got goosebumps hearing all that the entrepreneurs had to say. Our goal was for them to see that they hold the solutions in themselves, as well as have an incredible community to draw from right at home. Overwhelmingly that is exactly what they said.
These young Cubans demonstrate the true meaning of the phrase “necessity is the mother of invention”. It was both inspiring and humbling to work with them. And, together we built what I am sure will be long-lasting friendships and partnerships. I am excited to see what the future will bring, and hope this is only the beginning.
