Interview on the Estelle Borgeat Blog

One hour to understand that everything is closely interconnected, and that we do not know in advance what our studies, the people we meet, the companies we work for, or even the trials we go through will actually be useful for.

Since we cannot predict the future, we may as well do our very best. Who knows? One day, it may come in handy.

That is one of Mr Cohen’s pieces of advice.

Why Raphael H Cohen?

I discovered Mr Cohen during a conference on employer branding. Impressed by his eloquence and his ability to keep me fully engaged, I then found myself wondering:

- How does one become a speaker, and above all a good speaker? - How many hours of work does it require? - Who is behind this presentation?

To find out, I asked him whether he could spare me an hour. Which he kindly agreed to do.

How does one become a professor, speaker, author, serial entrepreneur, business angel and academic director of MBA programmes?

What if, for Mr Cohen, everything came down to his ability to seize opportunities? Or to his confidence in bouncing back when faced with failure?

Mr Cohen shared with me key episodes from his journey, the elements that explain how he came to be where he is today.

For example:

During his university studies, he applied himself and obtained excellent results. Results that would prove useful years later. He also took two optional courses that would turn out to be essential for the rest of his career. But at that stage, he did not know it yet.

As his first job after leaving university, he set up, with a friend, a business within the family company: promotional T-shirts. This venture would eventually lead them to obtain the rights to print clothing featuring Walt Disney characters. How? Thanks to his ability to identify and seize opportunities...

Initially, the distributor of Walt Disney films had approached them to print T-shirts for the launch of a new cartoon. At the moment of signing, he mentioned the Walt Disney licence in order to secure the right to print them. The story could have ended there, but they preferred to look into how to obtain it. This marked the beginning of a long and solid collaboration with the animation giant, which would lead them to become one of the biggest designers and producers of Disney, Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes clothing in Europe and North America.

A doctorate in complete anonymity:

As part of managing his company, Raphael H Cohen needed practical tools to control exchange rates in the various transactions with his customers and suppliers. However, unable to find any tools to do so, he decided to undertake a covert doctorate. Not wanting his father to feel that he was not 100% committed to the family business, he chose to do his doctorate in secret. As he did not have time to complete the preparatory bridging course, he made use of his strong university results to obtain an exemption. What he had learnt in one of the two optional courses gave him the key to solving the problem addressed in his doctoral thesis.

This shows that we never know in advance what use our studies will be to us.

A recognised business angel!

Once the T-shirt business had been sold, Mr Cohen invested in start-ups in a range of fields. He became a recognised business angel at a time when that term did not even yet exist.

In 1999, he was asked whether he knew someone who could teach a course on how to write a business plan. He had never taught before, yet he volunteered! One small problem: the professors at the University of Geneva had to hold a doctorate. As luck would have it, he had one. Another seed planted unintentionally, which opened the doors of the University to him.

With the administrative issues settled, it was time to prepare his course. It was his first time and he had no idea whether he would be any good. However, he had enough confidence in his ability to bounce back in the event of failure to give it a try. If his performance was poor, he would simply be yet another boring lecturer. Fortunately for his students, that was not the case.

Training:

A new adventure began: teaching! At the request of EPFL, in 2000 he went on to create the very first entrepreneurship course in Switzerland. The University of Geneva then asked him to create Switzerland’s first MBA in entrepreneurship. He threw himself in at the deep end and ran this programme for 20 years. Along the way, he launched the micro-MBA in entrepreneurial management: Become an entrepreneur or intrapreneur within your company: do better, differently.

Until he discovered intrapreneurship:

A company asked him to train its employees in entrepreneurship. Unfortunately, the first question from participants in the seminar shook his confidence. They asked him, “What are we supposed to do when we have no room for manoeuvre in our company and our ideas are not listened to?”

Bouncing back is something Raphael H Cohen knows how to do: he drew on several lessons from the other optional course he had taken during his studies, confirming that the small seeds sown upstream would bear beautiful trees long afterwards. These optional courses ultimately played an unexpected but central role in his career.

The result of the seminar, which had started so badly: 56% of participants stated three months later that they had launched initiatives within their company that they would not have launched if they had not taken this training. An unexpected result that sparked in Mr Cohen a passion for intrapreneurship.

Today he is one of the few international specialists in intrapreneurship and is even part of the global group of experts drafting the new ISO standard on the management of innovative ideas (ISO 56007).

What is intrapreneurship?

Intrapreneurship consists in behaving entrepreneurially within one’s employer’s organisation by identifying opportunities and exploiting them inside the organisation. It means being proactive and taking responsibility for implementation. It is the best way to give one’s career a boost. Fortunately, there are tools to achieve this, which are taught in the MicroMBA he has been running for many years (www.MicroMBA.info).

But what drives Raphael Cohen to teach, pass things on and create?

He told me that what he truly loves is helping people and enabling them to grow and derive greater professional satisfaction. How? By showing them how to make the most of opportunities and how to foster engagement within their teams.

His ambition is to open people’s professional chakras so that they can fully make the most of their potential.

Should intrapreneurship be taught?

His answer:

“It is a false question. We focus on entrepreneurs who create start-ups while forgetting all the exploitable opportunities within companies. Instead, people should be taught to identify, analyse and seize opportunities, whether within an organisation or by creating a start-up. The choice of vehicle for turning an opportunity into reality is a secondary matter. Seizing opportunities is the best way to gain freedom, unlock one’s potential and sometimes even create one’s own job.”

What would you recommend to someone who wants to launch a business?

To be careful to seize the right opportunity. Getting it wrong can be very costly: a waste of time, energy and money.

What is more, designing and launching a project can be prepared using tools that are within everyone’s reach. (Mr Cohen created the IpOp Model in 2006, several key elements of which are included in the new ISO 56007 standard.)

What advice would you give on selling yourself first?

- Cultivate your credibility by not talking nonsense - Be clear-eyed and aware of your limits - Surround yourself with complementary partners rather than identical ones - Have genuine self-confidence - Know how to bounce back in the event of failure

To sell your idea, the most important thing is to know how to convince decision-makers. That requires understanding their decision criteria. That is what the IpOp Model is for.

Before we finish? One question still remains unanswered: how does he manage to be such a good speaker?

Does he spend long hours in front of his mirror rehearsing his pitch? And in fact, how many hours does it take to learn a lecture or a four-hour course?

Mr Cohen admits that when he began teaching, he was afraid of public speaking. Since then, he has learnt that, to avoid full rehearsals beforehand, he prepares only the slides for his presentation and stops there. Afterwards, depending on the dynamics of the audience and the time remaining, he trusts his subconscious to guide him during his talk in choosing what he says and what he decides not to cover. In this way, he discovered that he could draw on personal resources whose existence he had not even suspected. This is one of the lessons he seeks to share in the courses he teaches, to help people tap into their true potential.