Today, the text on the TV screen said “Welcome to a new day with new opportunities.” We started with the oral presentations of everyone’s five most important key values. The participants were also able to talk about other words in the list or a word of their own proposal. All the key values should be life orientating guides. Honesty was the most popular key value in the group. Honesty is also the word that best sums up the other values. If we are to influence others, we must live by these values.
We went through what is considered entrepreneurial competencies and they are: initiative, responsibility, transform ideas into action, curiosity, self-reliance, creativity, courage to take risks, make decisions, communicate, collaborate, capitalize on opportunities and changes, develop and create value.
At 9.30 a.m. Astrid Ståhlberg came. She stayed until the end of the lessons, at two o’clock. She lectured on how small can be great, on the good that can be born out of a crisis, on failures that may have the merit of providing good lessons and insight, on good ideas being more important than money and that it is the ideas that create the successful entrepreneurship needed in Sweden and in Congo. Among other examples she told us about a shopping center in Harare that would be built and operated ecologically.
They wanted to avoid the expensive and energy-consuming air-cooling system and found their model in the animal world, in the way that termites tempers their stacks. The eggs must constantly maintain a temperature of 24 degrees. Termites have a sophisticated ventilation system that closes the channels towards the sunny side and opens towards the shadow side. The shopping center ventilation system was built after the termite cooling system. Astrid used many examples like this to concretize her message, and she gave many good examples of Congolese entrepreneurs who could serve as great role models for our group.
At the end, I asked if they would like us to finish with a prayer and I got an unanimous response. God’s blessing is also important for a Congolese entrepreneur.
