Kaizen and Entrepreneurship in Egypt
Entrepreneurship in Egypt has taken on a new meaning since President Obama’s Entrepreneurial Summit in 2009 and more recently the Revolution of January 25th that has empowered millions of youth and individuals to rebuild Egypt through establishing successful businesses. As a subcontractor to Chemonics International on the USAID-funded Egypt’s Competiveness Project (ECP), the Kaizen Company is supporting the Government of Egypt (GOE) in improving entrepreneurship and business skills within the Egyptian private sector. On April 27, 2011, Kaizen consultant, Bo Burlingham arrived in Egypt to support and advise entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial media and journalists*. Burlingham, who is new to international development consulting, works in the private sector as an editor-at-large of Inc. magazine and is the author of several best-selling books on entrepreneurship.
To begin, Burlingham attended the Cairo Startup Weekend where 300 young entrepreneurs from across Egypt came together to share ideas, form teams and launch start-ups in 54 hours. On the first day of the event 58 individuals pitched their business ideas to their professional peers. Participants voted for the best ideas and over the next two days thirty-two teams worked together to prepare a working prototype/product. During this planning and strategy phase, Burlingham presented his thoughts on what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur and provided feedback and advice to each team. On the last day of the event, each team presented their product to a panel of judges. The judges then announced the winners of cash and other prizes while participants cheered on their peers. Burlingham also attended The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Day at Alexandria University, where he again interacted with Egyptian entrepreneurs eager to present their business ideas and demonstrate their commercial products.
Throughout his assignment, Burlingham was able to meet with a variety of entrepreneurs of different ages, working in different sectors and at different stages of developing their business (es), including Abdulrahman Magdi , the founder of www.egypreneur.com. The start-up website is dedicated to Egyptian entrepreneurs and has gained a huge following on Twitter and Facebook. Burlingham provided advice on running the website and making it sustainable. Burlingham also met with Dr. Khaled Mackled, the owner of the start-up Egyptian entrepreneurship magazine Ryada, as well as members of his editorial and administrative staff. Burlingham provided his perspective on how Mackled should think about the magazine in order to make it a profitable venture. Meeting with the two different staff teams, Burlingham shared what he had learned at Inc. in regard to writing about entrepreneurship in order to engage readers. He also conducted a mock interview of two entrepreneurs to demonstrate how to look for stories. Burlingham held similar mock interview training with members of general interest media outlets in Egypt (radio, TV, newspapers and magazines) where he presented best practices in covering entrepreneurship, including certain points to keep in mind when writing about entrepreneurs in order to highlight drama. According to Burlingham, “entrepreneurship is an emotional process,” and stories need to be crafted to capture this emotion and give readers a sense of what the experience of being an entrepreneur is really like.
In Egypt the time is right for entrepreneurship and people are excited about learning more, from the entrepreneurs themselves, to the media covering their stories, and the individuals at home reading about them. Kaizen is working in Egypt to promote this positive entrepreneurial activity.
* Bo Burlingham has more than 40 years of professional experience in media, journalism with a specialized emphasis on business management and entrepreneurship. As a professional communicator and writer, Burlingham is a recognized senior expert and author in his field. He is called upon to give speeches 20 to 30 times per year as an authoritative expert on what it takes to build a great business. For the past 28 years he has served in an editorial capacity, for Inc. magazine – one of the foremost magazines targeting entrepreneurs worldwide – he currently serves as the editor-at-large. Burlingham is also the author of four books: The Great Game of Business, co-written with Jack Stack and honored as one of the 100 best business books of all time (more than 500,000 copies have been sold); A Stake in the Outcome, also co-written with Jack Stack; Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big, named one of five finalists for the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award; and his most recent book, co-authored with Norm Brodsky, The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up. Burlingham holds a BA from Princeton University in Public and International Affairs, where he was offered the prestigious Woodrow Wilson Fellowship and served as a Fulbright Scholar in France from 1967 to 1968.
