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If your business uses technology, but you are not trained in it, do you fear, or embrace technology?
If your business uses technology, but you are not trained in it, do you fear or embrace technology?
One of the joys of being an entrepreneur in the digital age is the breadth of opportunities technology offers, to reach customers and markets beyond anything we may have imagined even a decade ago. ‘Beyond Boundaries’ is the term that comes to mind when one thinks of today’s entrepreneurs.
At the same time, I wonder if sometimes the opportunities that technology seems to offer us, also throw up their own (interesting) challenges. For instance, if the potential market appears larger and larger, is it harder to focus and make one piece of it your own?
Be that as it may, one of the major trends I’m sure many of you may have noticed in the last few years is many women of all ages, but especially young women, setting up businesses enabled by technology. Not all of these scale up to be multi-million dollar enterprises (or even aim to), but from IT Services entrepreneurs and technology app builders to home bakers and dress-makers, women are enthusiastically adopting the use of technology to build, market and grow their businesses.
In my own case, as a non-tech person running a tech-enabled business, one of my learnings while running Women’s Web has been how creative the use of technology can be. As someone with training in literature as well as marketing, I had previously never thought of technology as a creative field. Yet, in the process of building this product, i.e this website and community that we offer users, I have realised that ideas flow in both directions.
Sometimes, we think of an experience that we would like users to have and then look to see how technology can enable it, but also, sometimes what technology makes possible inspires fresh ideas about making things better for users.
I am sure this is true for most of you who run businesses that use technology as an enabler. The challenge then, is to keep up one’s learning about tech, without necessarily becoming a technologist yourself!
I learnt this the hard way after the first year of running the site. In my first year, I kept tech at an arm’s length since I knew nothing about it, and assumed that the tech team I had hired would handle everything competently. This turned out to be a big mistake, and we ended up pretty much doing a complete overhaul at the end of the first year, thanks to a team that let us down. While I am still no expert, I realised that I need to at least understand how things work, whether or not I ever write a line of code myself.
Some of the ways non-tech entrepreneurs like us can keep learning about technologies that could impact our businesses include:
As someone who used to believe that technology was for engineers, my work as a digital entrepreneur has changed my understanding to one of more interest in and respect for what technology offers, even for very small businesses.
If you are an SMB owner, what are some of the key ways in which you use technology? Do you fear, or embrace technology? What do you do to keep yourself updated? Please do share in the comments.
This post is being supported by Dell, which is a key partner at the ongoing INKTalks event in Mumbai. The INKTalk Conference that is hosted annually explores how to affect change in the way the young and young at heart view their world, goals and ambitions, particularly in emerging economies. You can get a taste of the INKTalks events here.
Be sure to catch the Dell Session on How to Create a Brand on Social Media that will take place on the 1st of November between 3 and 4 pm. Do attend the event or catch the live Webcast. Tweet your favorite moments of the conference with #DellAtInkLive.
businesswoman using technology image via shutterstock
Founder & Chief Editor of Women's Web, Aparna believes in the power of ideas and conversations to create change. She has been writing since she was ten. In another life, she used to be read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, individual posts do not necessarily represent the platform's views and opinions at all times.
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Shows like Indian Matchmaking only further the argument that women must adhere to social norms without being allowed to follow their hearts.
When Netflix announced that Indian Matchmaking (2020-present) would be renewed for a second season, many of us hoped for the makers of the show to take all the criticism they faced seriously. That is definitely not the case because the show still continues to celebrate regressive patriarchal values.
Here are a few of the gendered notions that the show propagates.
A mediocre man can give himself a 9.5/10 and call himself ‘the world’s most eligible bachelor’, but an independent and successful woman must be happy with receiving just 60-70% of what she feels she deserves.
Darlings makes some excellent points about domestic violence . For such a movie to not follow through with a resolution that won't be problematic, is disappointing.
I watched Darlings last weekend, staying on top of its release on Netflix. It was a long-awaited respite from the recent flicks. I wanted badly to jump into its praise and will praise it, for something has to be said for the powerhouse performances it is packed with. But I will not be able to in a way that I really had wanted to.
I wanted to say that this is a must-watch on domestic violence that I stand behind and a needed and nuanced social portrayal. But unfortunately, I can’t. For I found Darlings to be deeply problematic when it comes to the portrayal of domestic violence and how that should be dealt with.
Before we rush to the ‘you must be having a problem because a man was hit’ or ‘much worse happens to women’ conclusions, that is not what my issue is. I have seen the praises and criticisms, and the criticisms of criticisms. I know, from having had close associations with non-profits and activists who fight domestic violence not just in India but globally, that much worse happens to women. I have written a book with case studies and statistics on that. Neither do I have any moral qualms around violence getting tackled with violence (that will be another post some day).