An Entrepreneurs Role in Shaping the Future
it’s said
that a picture is worth a thousand words
pictures are one of the most powerful
tools to visualize our time and history
but sometimes also the future
the power of a picture is the story and
the narrative that they tell
that’s why the picture we create has the
power to change
what the future holds
when i first got the request of being a
tedx speaker
i got super excited proud and honored
then the familiar feeling of doubt and
uncertainty started to kick in
and i started to ask myself why
am i really here what is the story that
i can tell
that would be worth listening to and
what is the picture that i’m trying to
project
what kind of future am i building
my name is linha kuhnetfalk and i am
and i am an entrepreneur i’m here today
because i’ve co-founded a technology
company that does
self-driving and electric transport
systems
ambition is to create more sustainable
cost
competitive and efficient transport
solutions
from a young age i have always been
interested in building things and
driving things forward but as many women
can relate to
i did not grow up exposed to a lot of
female founders and entrepreneurs
what i learned as an adult is that of
course there were brilliant female
inventors entrepreneurs and business
leaders in our history
it was just that their stories were were
never told
or at least not told to me
the picture of entrepreneurs that i got
was all about men and all the great
things that men could achieve
this often made me feel like i did not
have a voice
and that no one was counting on me to be
one of the people that could actually
build our future
sadly i know i am not alone in this
many women share my experience
but that does not mean that it has to be
true for the future
generation of entrepreneurs another
thing that i was told growing up was
that girls should not compete
they should settle for what is that they
could not compete in the business world
and that men were more suitable to build
companies than women
not that long ago one of my mentors said
to me
you are one of the most competitive
people that i have
ever met but you don’t let other people
see it
you just act and you work and then
people are surprised
about what you have done
i guess growing up thinking that no one
wanted
to hear my story made me start working
really hard without telling anyone
not because i wanted to keep it the
secret
it was just simply because i did not
think that people would care
and i believe that there are many people
that can relate to this
but on the upside without an audience
i could work and fail without being
judged
and i have failed many times
when we founded our company back in 2016
i was exposed to another very strong and
solid narrative of how transport should
be done
there was this saying from the industry
that heavy duty electric
transport will not work on an electric
platform
and that self-driving technology is way
into the future
and i mean way way into the future
and it might come as a surprise but they
also said that a young female cannot be
the one of the founders
of a company that wants to make a future
that’s electric and autonomous
our history is full of entrepreneurs
that has been challenging the status quo
aiming to build something better the
innovation of fossil based transport is
one of the single most important
innovations of humankind
because we built wealth and we built
society on it
but on the downside our dependency on
fossil fuels has
has gotten us into one of mankind’s
biggest challenges
transport is one of the major
contributors to the global
greenhouse co2 emissions and is one of
the fastest growing contributing
sectors and if you would have
to go back in just a few years it was an
unchallenged narrative
that we needed fossil fuel and that our
society could not
exist without it today entrepreneurs
all around the world are challenging
that narrative
this is not the first time that we have
challenged the world
and changed it it has in fact become
the norm the world started to change
very quickly about 200 years ago
the second information revolution spread
with the
wide adaptation of public education
and so did the ideas and the
implementation of how we should live our
lives
our way of living today is still very
much based on ideas from that revolution
books that educated how we should live
our lives was the
highest fashion great thinkers competed
in thoughts of how we should
how we could build a better society and
how we should live our lives
and in many ways we succeeded
the health and the wealth that we built
is due to new ways of thinking by
challenging what was
we managed to create a society where 98
of the people in the western world live
at the same level of wealth
as two percent did at the beginning of
the 19th century
not bad for making a change
but that does not mean that we are done
just imagine what we can do in the next
200 years
what will be the challenges for the next
generation of entrepreneurs
as today we have access to more
information
and knowledge than ever before but as
information and knowledge are getting
more widely spread
the more we start to simplify the
stories that
we tell simplification is a great tool
to spread
to spread information it gets around
fast and it makes it easier for people
to understand and learn
the danger however with simplification
is that
it will sometimes interfere with what is
actually possible
painting the world in black and white
leaves all
of the shades of grey out which makes it
hard to challenge
one simplified version of what is
possible is how to make transport
sustainable
when we founded our company we were told
that heavy-duty
electric trucks would never be possible
to make because the batteries would be
too heavy and it would not be possible
to do a good business case out of that
and to be fair they were not completely
wrong
because you cannot simply replace a
fossil fuel truck with an electric
one it is not as simple as that
but is it possible to do sustainable
transport
it is but it has to be rethought and we
have to draw a new picture
of how it can be done the transport
solutions of our future should not be
constructed from the knowledge
that we had in the 19 centuries it
should be constructed
of the knowledge that we have today
and so what is an entrepreneur’s role in
shaping our future
i believe that it is the entrepreneur’s
role to show that something else is
possible
to show that something can be better
than today
making a judgment based on old
narratives of what is possible does not
build great new companies or
societies and not everything that we
know to be true today
will be true tomorrow
and today we see entrepreneurs all
around the world
challenging the narratives from the 19th
century and proving that with new ideas
and innovations
we can reshape our future for the better
like ovil wright one of the wright
brothers who invented the airplane said
if we all worked on the assumption that
what is
accepted as true is really true
there would be little hope of advance
for me i see my role as an entrepreneur
to challenge what is
to not accept convention and to show how
things can be done
differently and this does not mean that
entrepreneurs will always be right
there will be a lot of failure along the
way but it will be
another version of how the future might
look like
one of my personal inspirations is coco
chanel
as an entrepreneur and founder of chanel
she redefined fashion
she introduced clothing that was made
that made it possible for
women to move more freely she challenged
the industry with more
simple and practical clothes for women
but maybe the most important thing that
she did
was that she inspired generations of
women to break with the old and create
something new
she stated my life did not please me
so i created my life
coconuts entrepreneurship and vision
created a new fashion industry
today there are more women entrepreneurs
in fashion than there are male ones
without chanel showing the way maybe it
would have looked different today
another business where female
entrepreneurship has come to be accepted
is within hair and beauty and who was
the pioneer behind that
have you ever heard about sarah
breedlove
she was an entrepreneur and a political
and social activist
she is recorded as the first female
self-made millionaire
in america she developed her company
and marked the line of cosmetics and
hair care products
for women through her business
and she did all of this in the 19th
century
there are still a lot of areas of
business where we need to see
more female founders and entrepreneurs
challenge what is
and transport is just one of them i do
believe that the best day of mankind
are still to come and we as
entrepreneurs and
innovators should show the way and
project an alternative picture
of what will become being an
entrepreneur
is to set yourself up for failure and
hope for success
one of the best advice that i have ever
received was from one of my role models
that said to me
sometimes you don’t have to perform
sometimes you just need to show up
and i believe being an entrepreneur is
many times just about that
showing up even though it’s
uncomfortable and scary
challenge the status quo be ready to
fail
but hope for success
and yes it is time for a pause
it is time for all of us to take some
time
and to reflect on the society that we
would like to see
and we need to start painting the
picture of the future
that we would like to see
so why am i here today i’m here today
because i am an entrepreneur
i dare to fail and i never give up
on a better tomorrow thank you
you