Start-ups to save the world

Start-up entrepreneurs serve, and do save the world

Entrepreneurship and innovation are part of my DNA. I was born into an Anglo-Jewish Rag Trade family in Sydney, Australia, where my father, Sidney Sernack “the man in your wardrobe” started his life as a small family business entrepreneur, in women’s clothing manufacturing, upon his return from serving in the Australian Defence Forces in the Second World War.

As a result, our family learned how to both survive and thrive on the trials and tribulations of entrepreneurial and innovation roller coaster ride. I served my own Rag Trade apprenticeship, initially as a Women’s Fashion Designer and later as a Senior Executive with the Grace Bros Department stores, (now part of the Myer Department store group). Where I travelled the world, as the Fashion Direction and Marketing Development Manager, responsible for ensuring that all of the people involved in the apparel, merchandising and marketing processes aligned these to the lifestyle needs of Australian consumers, today and in the future.

I ultimately exited corporate life and established the first design management consultancy in Australia, which has since evolved into an organisational learning and development focus on entrepreneurship and innovation.

Being a serial innovator and entrepreneur

I have now operated my own innovative entrepreneurial business for more than thirty-five years.

Most recently, I invested twelve years, iterating, pivoting and sharing the evidence-based, global research I undertook when I lived in Zichron Yaakov, in Israel, for six years.

This saw the birth of ImagineNation™ in 2012, as an Israeli start-up within Compass Learning Pty Ltd, inspired initially by the vibrant creative energy of the innovative Israeli culture and start-up entrepreneurship movement I experienced during this time.

I now specialise and operate digitally and globally from Melbourne, Australia, in the innovation learning, mentoring and coaching space.

A unique moment in time

This has caused me to ask, as an Australian-Israeli, in the face of the emotionally charged situation emerging from the current Israel-Hamas war, which has since exploded into a raging epidemic of global Anti-Semitism three catalytic questions:

• How might we explore new ways of feeling and thinking about it differently?
• How we might use this unique moment in time, to learn, to accept, acknowledge and ultimately let go of our collective pain, heartbreak, deep anger and hostility?
• How might we to open our hearts and minds to learn to consider what possibilities could arise from the cruel, and horrendous conflict impacting us so deeply?

Shifting our attention

I have been actively enagaging in hasbarah efforts since the start of the conflict, as I have a significant global following on the internet that can be leveraged, as well as a number of very close friends and colleagues in Israel whose families are sadly deeply affected by it.

My websites have since been under relentless global attack, causing me to take out expensive security software and to constantly work on eliminating the digital “attackers.” At the same time, I have been attempting to educate people by supporting others, and by sharing the “facts” as an intelligent response to the Israel “haters.”

I have also engaged in attempting to make sense of the global epidemic of Anti-Semitism, its systemic and paradoxical nature, where the incredible contribution the Jewish people and especially Israel have made towards making the world a better place, are largely unacknowledged, and even be considered to be despised.

This caused me to consider that perhaps, in this time of conflict and adversity, it’s an opportunity to shift our attention, by focussing on leveraging the “good news” this unique contribution brings to the world, by highlighting it constructively, by providing evidence of it, and perhaps even learning from it.

• Learning from adversity

Starting with how, despite the conflict, seven Israeli start-ups claim coveted Climate Solutions Prize, an initiative that incentivizes innovations that address the climate crisis. The winning start-ups, represent a wide variety of innovations in development within Israel’s clean tech ecosystem.

This supports the possibility, introduced by Singularity Founder Peter Diamandis, in his recent blog Bridging the Gap: How The World Is Becoming A Better Place:

“The good news is that exponential technologies are being used by entrepreneurs to create new products and services that are dematerializing, demonetizing, and democratizing old ways of doing business and driving increased global abundance”.

How might we collectively, use this unique moment in time, to explore, learn and share innovative ways of supporting start-up entrepreneurs, not just in Israel, but globally, to focus on serving humanity, today and in the future.

The start-up entrepreneurs

My experience globally, at ImagineNation™ in leading, teaching, coaching and mentoring innovation, made me realise that there are a number of ways to encourage, empower, enable and equip, ambitious and energetic people to engage in start-up entrepreneurship and innovation.

With the intent of supporting them to cultivate their curiosity and imagination and create new careers, invent new industries, and learn new ways of being, thinking and acting that contribute towards co-creating a peaceful, inclusive, equitable and sustainable world for everyone.

My key sources of inspiration

1. I first met OurCrowd founder Jon Medved, at one of his presentations in Jerusalem in 2012, he was the first person I encountered who shared with the audience, a whole systems and innovative perspective. By focussing on nurturing accelerating technological changes that delivered a balanced scorecard that serves People, Profit and the Planet and leads the way forwards in this field.

I have been following his innovative approach to funding entrepreneurial start-ups, since then, because he is a thought leader in developing different options to funding Israeli start-ups, and even managed the billion-dollar sale of Waze to Google Maps.

• The “secret sauce”

This encouraged me to research, model and replicate the “secret sauce” behind entrepreneurial start-up success, into my innovation learning and coaching programs.  This involves colliding an urgent necessity (without innovation Israel would have minimal exports) with the notion of self-transcendence, which is all about repairing and improving the world (Israeli innovations lead the world in certain sectors), in Hebrew, it is called “tikkun ulam”.

Recently,  Izhar Shay, a leader of Israel’s high-tech community and a former minister of science and technology, whose son Yaron was killed while heroically defending a community in southern Israel against the Hamas onslaught on October 7 declared that:

“For every fallen soldier, for every murdered civilian, let’s put together a new, innovative start-up which will be the product or service that will serve thousands of companies and millions of people around the world,”

“Let’s put together the infrastructure for a better world.”

Despite the heart ache and despair, to himself and to his family, in losing his precious son to the latest Hamas onslaught, Izhar Shay managed to feel, think and act differently about the potentiality of Israeli start-up entrepreneurship.

2. Time Magazine recently shared an article describing “200 Best inventions of 2023”

With just a tiny population of less than nine and half million people, eight Israeli start-ups were featured, in Time Magazines “200 Best inventions of 2023” which is amazing considering the tiny population of Israel.

3. Nature Portfolio Scientific Reports also recently shared an article on “The impact of founder personalities on start-up success”

A recent research study of a sample of 21,187 large scale start-ups globally, showed that founder personality traits are a significant feature of a firm’s ultimate success.

They investigated two main research questions:

1. Which personality features characterise founders?
2. Do their personalities, particularly the diversity of personality types in founder teams, play a role in start-up success?

• Five personality traits

The research identified the Big Five personality traits of start-up founders across 30 dimensions that significantly differ from that of the population at large.

Some of the key personality facets that distinguish successful entrepreneurs include a drive for variety and novelty, starting new things (openness to adventure), being the centre of attention (lower levels of modesty) and being exuberant (higher energy and activity levels).

• Start-ups are a team sport

To a large extent, founding a start-up is a team sport; therefore, diversity and complementarity of personalities matter in the foundation team. It has an outsized impact on the company’s likelihood of success. While all start-ups are high risk, the risk becomes lower with more founders, particularly if they have distinct personality traits.

Entrepreneurial Israeli start-ups have unique personality traits

Many of the Israeli start-ups and their teams, as featured in the Time Magazine article embody and enact the key personality traits described in the research study, including:

• A constant drive for variety and novelty.
• Starting new things with an openness to adventure.
• Being the centre of attention (lower levels of modesty) and being exuberant (higher energy and activity levels) which are drive by being passionately purposeful and successful in their search for innovative solutions to complex problems.

Serving the common good

All of these traits, states, mindsets, behaviours and skills can be learned, there is sufficient evidence-based research, and real-life successful examples to provide the social proof that innovation and start-up entrepreneurship can be learned.

It just requires people, and especially, anti-Zionists, anti-Semites, “militants” and terrorists, to open their minds and hearts, and let go of their linear and binary perspectives of the world to stop fighting.

To start embracing, embodying feeling, thinking and acting differently about the role they play in the world.

To operate from an open heart, mind and will, and be optimistic in co-creating environments that embraces the dynamic forces of technology and innovation, and despite the immense global conflicts and challenges that are currently confronting us all.