Entrepreneurship Now

How can you better understand your customers? In this episode of Entrepreneurship Now, we are joined by Roger Wade, Founder and CEO of BOXPARK, London’s award-winning food and retail revolution, who shares his experiences, purposes, and key insights on how to run a successful business. Roger’s entrepreneurial journey offers valuable lessons for aspiring business leaders. Firstly, he emphasises the importance of creating unique experiences for your customers, as well as stressing the significance of product excellence, driving traffic to your business, and optimising conversion rates. Finally, Roger also discusses the importance of emotional intelligence and elaborates on the difference between entrepreneurs and leaders. For more thought leadership and business insights from London Business School faculty and alumni, visit london.edu/think.  Sign up to receive a curated selection of articles, podcasts and films direct to your inbox twice a month at london.edu/think/subscribe.  Follow us on social media:  twitter.com/LBS  linkedin.com/school/london-business-school  facebook.com/LondonBusinessSchool

What does it take to launch and scale a sustainability-focused business? In this episode of Entrepreneurship Now, Jane Khedair, Executive Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School, is joined by a diverse panel of impact entrepreneurs, who discuss overcoming problems as a start-up business, their motivations and drivers, and how they accelerated their business development by collaborating with other stakeholders of society. Finally, they consider how to measure the social impact of their ventures, as well as looking at how to find the balance between impact and income. The panel includes Jules Buker, founder of TreeApp; Harriet Scriven, founder of Re-Style; and Giorgia Granata, co-founder and CEO of Wype. For more thought leadership and business insights from London Business School faculty and alumni, visit london.edu/think. Sign up to receive a curated selection of articles, podcasts and films direct to your inbox twice a month at london.edu/think/subscribe. Follow us on social media: Follow us on social media: twitter.com/LBS linkedin.com/school/london-business-school facebook.com/LondonBusinessSchool

Luis von Ahn, founder of language learning platform Duolingo, talks to London Business School’s Jeff Skinner about his experience of becoming an entrepreneur and his commitment to creating products that do social good. It’s a journey that offers up some useful lessons for any entrepreneur starting out.  Luis von Ahn is an entrepreneur and former professor at Carnegie Mellon University who is considered one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. He is known for co-inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur Fellow and selling two companies to Google in his 20s. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language-learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With over 500 million users, it is now the most popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded app in the Education category worldwide on both iTunes and Google Play. Luis has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Top Young Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine. Luis was in a fireside chat with Jeff Skinner, Teaching Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School. Follow us on social media: twitter.com/LBS linkedin.com/school/london-business-school facebook.com/LondonBusinessSchool

LBS Start up diaries and entrepreneurship series. Jeff Skinner (Executive Director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship), discusses the growth of entrepreneurship with the architect of the movement, Prof John Mullins. The shift hasn’t just been driven by corporate downsizing but some great role models who have shifted perceptions and made it cool.

What makes an entrepreneur? Find out in our new podcast series. In the first episode, we hear from Monique Baars, former management consultant, London Business School alumna and founder of Fineazy. “Not many people resign from BCG to do their MBA and then start a business, but for me it was very deliberate,” she tells Jeff Skinner, Executive Director of LBS’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. “I’d reached a time when I thought, if I could apply everything I’ve learnt and spend these hours solving one of the biggest social problems of our time, imagine the impact I could have.” Fineazy empowers people to make better financial decisions with the help of an AI chatbot. “I’ve never woken up in the morning more excited to get stuff done,” says Baars. “At the same, I’ve never had to manage the incredible highs and lows that come every hour of every day…”