Entrepreneurship

Get Ready for Season 4 of Grit & Growth

Meet more intrepid entrepreneurs in Season 4 of Grit & Growth.

April 16, 2024

| by Stanford Seed

Welcome back to Grit & Growth from Stanford Graduate School of Business. In Season 4, you’ll hear tales of entrepreneurial trials and triumphs, obstacles and opportunities, and, of course, plenty of grit and growth. Plus, we share insights from Stanford faculty and global experts on how to avoid the pitfalls of growth and achieve success.

We’ll talk to entrepreneurs from Africa and South Asia and hear their impressive stories of business growth despite a host of challenges, including poor infrastructure, unpredictable regulations, and limited access to finance. This season, we explore what it takes to expand your business across multiple countries, revisit marketing strategy, and tackle the difficulties of both scaling and downsizing your workforce.

Season 4 is coming soon. Tune in!

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Grit & Growth is a podcast produced by Stanford Seed, an institute at Stanford Graduate School of Business which partners with entrepreneurs in emerging markets to build thriving enterprises that transform lives.

Hear these entrepreneurs’ stories of trial and triumph, and gain insights and guidance from Stanford University faculty and global business experts on how to transform today’s challenges into tomorrow’s opportunities.

Full Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated by machine and lightly edited by humans. They may contain errors.

(00:01)
Darius Teter: We know that entrepreneurs play a pivotal role in directly addressing the gaps and challenges present in emerging markets.

(00:07)
Michele Gelfand: Innovation involves both creativity and coming up with crazy new ideas.

(00:12)
Darius Teter: But how does an idea grow into a business, especially when solving for complex social problems, economic transformation, and sustainable development in rapidly changing, sometimes fractured economies.

(00:24
Acha Leke: We talk about Africa, but there’s no one Africa, and there’s no one sub-Saharan Africa.

(00:28)
Darius Teter: It takes an understanding of the community, its people, and their culture.

(00:32)
Taha Jiwaji: You have to go visit these places. There’s just so much. You have to learn about each market. You need to spend time on the ground to really learn about it.

(00:40)
Darius Teter: It takes intentional planning and sometimes an entirely new way of thinking about the problem. Did you actually have a strategy written down?

(00:48)
Taha Jiwaji: Absolutely no plan.

(00:50)
Darius Teter: But businesses don’t magically realize their full potential and just grow overnight.

(00:54)
Michele Gelfand: The first thing I think we need to do as leaders is analyze our organizations in terms of the people, the practices, and the leadership. Then we have to think about how do we bring them together.

(01:03)
Darius Teter: It means moving fast and seizing opportunities despite the risks and the unknowns.

(01:08)
Arun Jagannathan: I think if you don’t do it, eventually someone else is going to come and do it.(01:16)

Darius Teter: I am your host, Darius Teter, and in season four of Grit & Growth we speak to people who are unlocking opportunities in Africa and South Asia by building successful businesses.

(01:25)
Steve Ciesinski: The sophistication of technology can be yours, even if you’re a smaller company.

(01:30)
Darius Teter: Along with insights from Stanford Graduate School of Business faculty and global experts, we’ll explore stories about the evolution of digital technology, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship.

(01:40)
Arun Jagannathan: What AI does is it makes good very easy, but great is still very hard.

(01:47)
Darius Teter: We’ll discuss what it takes to expand your business across multiple countries, across cultural dynamics, and going from a good leader to a phenomenal one. Subscribe to Grit & Growth today and listen to new episodes this spring, wherever you get your podcasts.

Entrepreneurship