ENTREPRENEUR BIZ TIPS: The Lost Entrepreneurs | Alejandro Crawford | TEDxNYU

ENTREPRENEUR BIZ TIPS: The Lost Entrepreneurs | Alejandro Crawford | TEDxNYU

Here’s Great Tip: The Lost Entrepreneurs | Alejandro Crawford | TEDxNYU


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When entrepreneurship becomes a privilege, we doom ourselves to fighting over pieces of the world invented yesterday. The stories nerds love hold a clue to reversing this trend, argues Alejandro Crawford, Managing Director of Acceleration Group and cofounder of Rebelbase. To learn to use their powers and make their ideas real, young problem solvers need access to knowledge, space and an alliance.

Alejandro Crawford, Senior Consultant at Acceleration Group, helps leaders of mission-driven businesses, CBOs, funders and governments to seize “acceleration moments” to increase their impact on the markets and communities they serve. He develops actionable strategies that enable leaders to get ahead of change, prove new models, create and measure impact, and turn around organizations. A frequent writer and speaker on how to equip people to produce solutions of their own, Crawford is professor of entrepreneurship for the Bard MBA in Sustainability. He has created an array of frameworks, platforms and courses for clients and campuses in impact-oriented strategy, entrepreneurship and growth. He earned his BA from Cornell and his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at

6 Replies to “ENTREPRENEUR BIZ TIPS: The Lost Entrepreneurs | Alejandro Crawford | TEDxNYU”

  1. As a student of Alejandro Crawford's who is currently finishing up his final semester at Baruch College, I want to point out to everyone that his teaching style, to me, is the way entrepreneurship should be taught. I didn't really see the problems and challenges of innovation through the lens of problem solving, of trying to create positive change in the world instead of being passive and letting things remain they are, largely broken. The world is spinning faster and faster, and a new wave of courageous people have to take the helm. Bravo to Crawford who is trying to inspire the youth with his messages. Highly recommend him in any teaching in public speaking setting!

  2. That was the most grounded Ted Talk I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a lot of them about getting more money, more power, and most importantly: more meaning. But this talk spoke the truth that brilliant, broke people need freedom and funds to fail and grow.

    I also love how Professor Crawford puts the ingredients together for HOW to give young entrepreneurs this freedom. And because I was once a broke (now successful) entrepreneur, I can attest that his formula is CORRECT! Knowledge of my power, a space where I could make mistakes and learn to harness that power, and an alliance of supportive friends is a perfect description of the elements that made it possible for me to discover new ways to deliver value.

    Everyone committed to innovation should watch this video.

  3. This seemed somewhat poorly structured with confused points.

    he was trying to tie political action with entrepreneurship, but to me it just meshed rather poorly.

    he was talking about a decline in entrepreneurship. I think he's confusing the decline of new small businesses with entrepreneurial enterprises which are two different things.

    the hero story examples seem to also be fraught with potential inconsistencies and don't marry that well together. first all these stories were more about change from within their own society and the fact that they didn't start the story like in Hogwarts is more of a way to help introduce the audience to the world. Also don't Tom riddle and the Sith fit your logic a lot better then like the classic hero's. the Sith were the ones that came from an extremely different society with ideas that conflicted with the status quo of the thousands of years old republic. where as luke came from a planet nominally controlled by the empire, with his father being one the highest ranking people within the empire. Actually the closest matching example is admiral thrawn, an alien from outside the empire who worked his way up to become leader of the navy through sheer mental acuity. Way better when you consider the heros were usually pretty ambitionless.

    Anyway my point in this badly structured comment is that making half your argument based on a purely fictional analogy that loosely relates to your point isn't a good idea.

    Building a wall is dumb, but its realistic affect on immigration is peanuts.

    America is one of the most heterogenous place to have ever existed, That isn't going to change anytime soon. That brings me to one of the only actual good points he made about tech entrepreneurship being homogeneous in appearance. This isn't because of immigration or anything like that, it's because of investors like himself and economic demand. There is abundant diversity in American universities but less so in entrepreneurship, so wouldn't the problem be more likely internally​ rather than externally (immigration).

    to sum up: in the first half he talked about decades long decline of entrepreneurship or diversity of ideas. In the second half he said nationalist politics (anti-immigrant and the likes) was leading to foreign entrepreneurs missing out on infrastructure and ability to take their ideas to reality, but immigration and access to infrastructure are higher than they have ever been. these two things don't support each other and don't flow on from each other.

    Additionally: his mag Lev story was about how he was lucky to have New York library, equating it to ease of becoming an entrepreneur. However with the internet it marries with his narrative less well.

    Quick note, not from america so I don't really have any stake in his arguments either way, I just didn't like how he argued.

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