5 Standout Ideas from SIME Winter Edition 2022

1. Embrace Your Imperfection

It turns out that we trust people more who make little mistakes. So don’t beat yourself up for not being perfect. People wouldn’t believe it anyway. An anecdote from Jon Levy, author of “Invited” had two groups interview for jobs. One group was coached to be perfect. The other group was coached to be perfect but to spill some coffee or drop some papers. The second group was more liked and trusted.

2. The Age of the Roll Player

We had a great panel discussion with Coffee Sandberg an Emmy award winning producer, Dr Ruben R Puentedura, role playing and strategy expert, and Jane Skullman, Producer Starstable Online. They told us to empower our inner gamer as a way of getting better to test decision making, creativity and analysis. It turns out that practicing these skills in games can save us from paralysis when black-swan events happen in our personal and professional lives. So, more Dungeons and Dragons means less disaster and desperation.

3. Buzzwords are Killing Innovation

We had a great small group discussion with professionals from Tik-Tok, Warner Music, Stockholm School of Economics, and the city of Malmo (I joined a fun group) about Web3, digital currency and how it can be used. We all agreed that because the buzzwords are so antithetical to communication, these otherwise smart people were nowhere near the stage of understanding and applying it to their worlds. They told me it was up to people like Berghs to help de-buzz the technology so we can get onto the opportunity.

4. Who Gets the Money?

Susanne Najafi, founder and partner of Backing Minds gave us some nasty statistics about how difficult outsiders to the Venture Capital world find it hard to secure funding and almost never get serious backing. Just as we were all about to cry into our coffee, she pointed out that this is fertile ground for alternative VCs who take a deeper look. One Syrian refugee whose real-estate company was funded and is now expanding to Europe was asked why he took such a bold risk. He laughed and said something like “When you’ve taken the risks that I’ve taken in life to get me to Sweden, how risky is starting a business? It’s nothing!“. He also had a great beard to match his great attitude and we all kind of fell in love a tiny bit.

5. It’s All About Foot Traffic

By hosting the event at Epicentre meant that there was a constant mix of people flowing in and out. So that people from Sime and people working at Epicentre would bump into each other and make small talk in the line for coffee. It means that there was always a buzz and you’d bump into all kinds of people. It really worked well. Designing fun ways for people to bump into is smart. We should all do more of it.