Interesting thoughts from the talk by Primož Zelenšek
I hope that we will be able to come together and understand that it is good for everyone if we are all successful.
Over the years, you gain experience and learn to say “no” to many things more quickly.
Slovenia has outstanding individuals. When these individuals have the opportunity and are in the right place at the right time, great stories are made. And these stories are being made.
To generalise - we find it easiest to work with people who are like us. If you find a business partner you like working with, then that's the best.
If you're a little bit of everywhere, you're not really strong anywhere.
We hired quite a few foreign experts because we believed that foreigners would give us a really strong breakthrough. We paid them very dearly, but we did not get much back.
Entrepreneurship is like the death train. You go up and down a bit, and you don't know what to expect around the next bend. You're at the top, everything's great and fine, and then you're thrown back down again...
I try to lead by example. I am first in the front line, not at the back being clever about why we didn't do something. Go out there and do it yourself and you will quickly see if something can or cannot be done.
If you're not aiming for Mars, it's a question of whether you'll even land on the Moon.
It is better to set higher goals and then get a little lower than to set a reality. It turns out that then you get even lower than that reality.
It's very similar in a family and in a company: we are together through thick and thin. Of course, the good is great. But then there are darker times when you have to be honest with yourself and your colleagues and tell it like it is. The hardest part is how to do it in a way that everybody understands and everybody accepts to some extent and changes it.
If you are not an optimist, if you do not believe that things can be done, then the question is whether you will be able to move the walls.
Because foreign countries are interesting ... up to a point. You have more opportunities abroad. But here we are at home. This is where we come from. It's great to be home and it's great if you succeed here.
Mining values are in our genes.
Let us show ourselves as we really are. To be successful in the world today, you have to be different. It doesn't take a lot of science - just show up as you really are. I think that kind of authenticity creates success.
Sometimes we need a cold shower to find a new vision and goals. To be honest, a lot of times we are waiting for it to come from somewhere, but we don't have a clear path of what we want to become and where we want to go. Let us look at Slovenia. Since 2006, when we got the euro and became part of the European Union, I have not seen a clear higher goal. It is the same with Europe.
Europe - if you rest on your laurels, or if you run out of a basic resource, the battle is to some extent lost. The question will be how to move forward.
I believe that it is possible to produce in Slovenia for the same or lower price and have better quality than abroad. We need to keep this in European hands. I do not see the point of transferring all the knowledge that we are accumulating today to China.
Zasavje was one of the richest regions of Yugoslavia. Here, success was present. There was a lot of knowledge. Our parents and grandparents had to put in a lot of effort to dig the ore and to be able to sell it, and they were clever enough to be able to process it. Knowledge, vision, innovation. We had a lot of things that gave us a good foundation so that today we, and all the young people who come after me, will not be afraid to create. We have solid conditions. Once you are at the bottom, as Zasavje was, it only goes up.
Some captured highlights from the event STORIES OF ACROBATES with Uroš Slake: Primož Zelenšek, Chipolo, and Jan Kolar, DBDtools
These events are also organised to promote entrepreneurship and creativity and to show entrepreneurship in a positive light.
