Three “force multipliers” can take a business to the next level.
BY FAISAL HOQUE | November 9, 2014
Also posted on LinkedIn | November 21, 2014
My grandmother lived in a remote village in Bangladesh. She could barely read or write; never had a formal education of any kind; yet she managed a farming and sharecropping business quite successfully.
She mobilized, organized, and managed a collaborative community of farmers, merchants, and seasonal workers. She had nine children, executed all household affairs, and made time to spend with her grandchildren when we visited her. She was barely five feet tall, skinny as a rod, and very soft-spoken.
This village had no electricity, no modern conveniences, no phones, and barely had passable road transportation.
It is at that remote village in the mid ’70s that I was introduced to entrepreneurship and leadership. I just didn’t realize it then!
A couple of months back, I was introduced to the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women program. I talked to EY team members Kerrie McPherson, Katie Johnson, and Jennifer L. Compton about EY’s success with the program, their learnings, and inspiration that have been ignited by the women in the program.
And I just met some of these remarkable entrepreneurs at the EY Strategic Growth Forum.
From the beginning of time, women have always played a critical role in business and commerce. In a male-dominated, global society, those contributions are not always recognized. The story of my grandmother is one such example. And although times are different, the fundamentals remain the same.
EY’s program and the celebration of Women Entrepreneurship is particularly inspiring as it is attempting to scale women ventures to significant size and impact.
According to joint research conducted by EY with Babson College’s Center for Women’s Leadership, 46% of the privately held firms in the US are now at least half owned by women. These companies represent almost 16 million jobs.
However, despite robust growth in the early stages, these companies are not scaling up to the degree they could. Businesses owned by men are three and a half times as likely to reach $1 million in annual revenues as are businesses owned by women.
For men or women, scaling and sustaining a venture is anything but easy. I know this firsthand from my own venture efforts and have written about them in our book “Everything Connects — How to Transform and Lead in the Age of Creativity, Innovation, and Sustainability.”
Similar to what I have been learning and sharing about entrepreneurship, innovation, and leadership, the EY report reveals three noteworthy force multipliers, which are contributing significantly to accelerated growth in the women-led companies. Below is the summary of their findings, combined with my own learnings.
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