Many case studies have been written about iconic companies that started during a downtown. That’s because difficulty necessitates ingenuity. Companies like 3M, Adobe Systems, Apple, CNN, Disney, FedEx, General Electric, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Lotus Software, Microsoft, and Southwest Airlines all started in down times – as well as more recent examples such as Aibnb, Slack, Square, Uber, Urban Outfitters, Venmo, WhatsApp and Whole Foods. Grit, tenacity and focus are more likely to lead to success then just passion. Entrepreneurs are made, not born, and hard times is often what forges them. They are people who target a problem and leverage resources to solve it. They are good at generating ideas and strategically executing on them. They observe trends, recognize economic and social forces, foresee technological advances, and scan the horizon to find both gaps and opportunities.
The next speaker in our “Tea Talk” series, in partnership with the Republic of Tea, will be discussing the wave of innovation he expects to see unleashed over the next decade, driven in part by the collective experience of COVID-19 and its profound disruption to every aspect of our life. Founder, tech entrepreneur and investor Corey Lieblein ’93 will join us Wednesday April 8 at 3 p.m. via Zoom for a virtual fireside chat about the way this unprecedented period may fundamentally change what we think about home, work, lifestyle, social networks, technology, health and well-being, life and career. His perspective is that this alignment of profound change across every sector is creating disruption that will produce innovation as significant as the era when the Internet and smart phones fundamentally changed our lives. His optimism is compelling. Join us.
Link to the Zoom conversation is in this story: https://launchpad.syr.edu/corey-lieblein-launchpad-talk/
Photo: Corey Lieblein ’93