I am a founder
Karina Udland, founder of HOISK
This does not mean I’m not female. I’m a founder happy to be female, and I believe in equality. I love this enlightening campaign on LinkedIn. Quote: “Putting my gender in front of what I am belittles what I have accomplished, and reminds women how few of us get to where I am. I’m ready to drop the gender and get right to the work of what I’m doing”.
I started my first company in 1989 and my second company in 2004. HOISK was founded in 2016 and I rely on nobody else regarding funding. For now. My philosophy is to keep control of the company and build a solid foundation based on circular economy and social entrepreneurship. The oldfashioned way, I was told. Which, as it should, takes time.
That gives me the possibility to study. Being a student at 57, and working as a founder is a great privilege. Studying leadership and sociology beside my work at HOISK strengthens both the company and myself. Learning new strategies, like for instance the Blue Ocean Strategy by Rene Mauborgne and Chan Kim, at the university and at the same time being able to implement and work directly with strategies like this, is an amazing opportunity.
Sociologist Max Weber on how modern capitalism began - in short:
Weber wrote that capitalism in Northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant work ethic was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated emergence of modern capitalism. Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spirit_of_Capitalism
However: Sociologist, feminist and Webers wife, Marianne Weber (1870 - 1954), criticizes her husband for not including women in his research. (Source: the “Women Founders - sociology and social theory 1830 - 1930”, page 212). She also talks of domination and subordinates in relationships:
Marianne Weber describes the subordinates as not necessarily complying with authoritative domination..the subordinate has to find ways in which to survive as a willful subjectivity under domination by using the powers of the weak: secrecy, manipulation, lies, silence, childishness, coquetry and sexuality.
I`m letting this statement hang - would love comments below. And, by the way, in my studies of sociology on the bachelor level, women are absent. Even though on Marianne and Max`s time, Marianne Weber was the famous one. Feminist and sociologist. Once when Max held a lecture, people wondered who he was. “Oh, that is Marianne Webers husband”, was the comment.
Blue Ocean Strategy in short:
Our research journey began 30 years ago, at a time when global competition was heating up like never before. For the first time in history, American companies were fast losing ground to a new set of competitors – Japanese corporations.
As researchers based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, we not only read about the challenges facing American companies, we saw it with our own eyes. Just next door, Detroit, once the auto capital of the world, was devastated. The economy of the developed world was shifting. Demand was no longer outstripping supply, as it had following World War II. Instead, the world was facing a new, tougher game of supply outstripping demand, which meant ever-greater competition.
How can a company break out of this red ocean of bloody competition and generate strong, profitable growth? What does it take to create new market space and make the competition irrelevant? Read more: https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/our-story/
Circular economy in short:
Today we take resources from the ground to make products, which we use, and, when we no longer want them, throw them away. Take-make-waste. We call this a linear economy.
A circular economy is based on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. Read more: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/what-is-the-circular-economy
To round it up: be a founder your own way. But care for your playgrounds.