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