“No labels for entrepreneurs!”, a young business leader from Italy cries out

Exclusively written for the Sting by Davide Giordano, President of Junior Enterprise Torino Politecnico (J.E.To.P), member of JADE. A friend asked me, “Can you suggest me a good wine?”, my reply, “choose one with no labels: grab a good wine bottle and then strap off its label, write a good, long story and use that as your label”. Entrepreneurs hate labels, they box us into perceptions and structured roles. Should I be labeled as an innovator? Startupper? Creator? Entrepreneurs can change, innovate themselves and the environment where they operate, think about people like Jobs or Musk and the different roles they played! Instead of focusing on labels, focus on what you need to achieve your goals: capacities. The following paragraphs, based on my personal experience, contain some of the natural skills that every entrepreneur should possess. Dare to change “The first step toward change is awareness. The second step is acceptance”, I started my career as Junior Entrepreneur two years ago, I was very different, my labels were “student” and “engineer” and those were my limits. JEWC: Junior Enterprise Worldwide Conference in August 2014 gave me the opportunity to confront myself with more than 600 students from all over the world doing great things in different areas. This step was fundamental, I gained acceptance and awareness, I became President in my Junior Enterprise and introduced new great changes. New projects like WTT: Wearable Tech Torino, first wearable expo in Italy, a new team, a new logo, new business units and markets to attack. Going the extra mile Entrepreneur is “a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, usually with considerable initiative and risk”. Initiatives involve risk, even in a safe environment as a Junior Enterprise we can experiment risk and sometimes fear. There were times during my path when all I wanted to do was quitting, the fear of losing everything made me feel almost “blind” in front of every decision. What gave me strength to go the extra mile? People. You can be an absolute genius, but you won’t be able to succeed alone, you need people around you, not only for their skills, but most of all for the energy they transmit you. Make a request, and it will be answered After months working on the Wearable Tech event we found ourselves with a problem, we had great talks and workshops, but we still needed companies we lacked of sponsors and exhibitors. How did we manage it? We asked. All the work we did was asking, calling every company on the list and signing deals. In this way we managed to gain more than 25 companies and sponsor in just one month, going straight from idea to action, as a real entrepreneur would do. From idea to action Forget your labels and the next time you have a great idea just be ready to change, don’t be afraid to lose something. “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.” About the author I think as an Engineer, I operate as an Entrepreneur. In January 2015 I’ve become President at J.E.To.P. – Junior Enterprise Torino Politecnico. I’ve managed a Junior Enterprise, an association composed by students, but structured exactly like an enterprise, with 61 students working on different projects, Event creation & organization, Mobile & Website development, Visual Design, Social Media Planning & Strategy. Together we created WTT: Wearable Tech Torino, the first exhibition in Italy on the wearable technologies. Today I’m Senior Advisor for J.E.To.P. and Master student in Computer Science at Politecnico di Torino.