EP047: Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen, COO & Co-founder at Eat Me App from Serbia

Sanja Milosavljević: Good day, good people. My name is Sanja Milosavljevic and I will be your host today. You are listening and watching Mondopreneur. It is a podcast dedicated to entrepreneurship, the promotion of entrepreneurship, the promotion of some good values ​​related to entrepreneurship. We want to share the stories of interesting people, mostly women, who do some important things and contribute to the community or society with what they do. This whole project is supported by the American Embassy in Belgrade in Serbia, and thanks to them we can share the stories of people from all over the world. My guest today is Aleksandra. She is from Belgrade and has one interesting story – both private and business. We met at the Academy for Circular Economy, organized in Belgrade a few years ago. And we were divided into teams. Unfortunately, the two of us were not in the same team, but I closely followed the project that was a pilot project that her team was working on. And somehow I remembered it as something that is useful for the community, for society, beautiful, profitable and in the spirit of circular economy and in the spirit of environmental protection and is part of that global fight against climate change that is definitely happening, whether we want to admit it or not. I will enjoy this conversation because Alexandra has one breadth that I hope you will both hear and see and I hope you will enjoy as well. Aleksandra, hello, how are you?

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Hello, thanks for asking. I am great, with AC on. Joyful, just how I have to be.

Sanja Milosavljević: Tell me, I usually ask guests to briefly introduce themselves to us: where do they come from, what is their educational background, how their education affects what they do today or it does not. Maybe they are doing something completely different. And tell us, share with us if you have an interesting hobby, something that fulfills you, something to which you dedicate your free time.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Well, here’s something in short, let’s start with those simple things. I was born in Belgrade, I grew up there, I finished elementary school and high school, I tried out at a couple of faculties that didn’t appeal to me in general, and I had that inner calling – it was supposed to be psychology, but it wasn’t, due to circumstances – war, sanctions, blah-blah-blah, but somehow one of the things that attracted me was going abroad, out of curiosity, getting to know other cultures and so on. There were some plans, so due to circumstances, a made a mistake in life. I have spent 10-11 years there, nothing was as I expected. Nothing went according to plan. I met a fantastically organized system, I had the opportunity to understand it, because I am a generation just like you and like a bunch of people who are not part of the system, so we are constantly whining about the system, and then when you see what the system really is, only then you can actually measure who you are. Somehow you measure yourself against both the non-system and the system. Norway is an organized society, my biggest and most beautiful impression of staying in Norway is Norwegian nature. And now for what reason – apart from what is completely phenomenal to the eye, I met a silence in Norway that scared me at first because it was too loud. You come from a big city, from chaos, from stress, war, bombing, everything, and then you actually realize how loud your brain is and how much of that waste you have in your head that is somewhere yours, somewhere not, somewhere picked up. So one of my primary goals is to somehow- and I left in my thirties, I wasn’t too young, on the contrary. So I spent a lot of time in nature and I actually found when I managed to relax and when I managed to recycle that waste, in a way so, I found a peace and a Zen and then I actually primordially felt what part of nature we actually are. I have always loved nature, I have always been in contact in our countryside house and with the ground and dirty feet and but I actually felt something that I had never felt before – and I was 30 – and I traveled, and I thought I did. And that left very – I think it somehow confirmed me and in fact, revealed to me some of my path, among other things, which I strive for, because for me it is simply sustainability, working with nature, but now it is again involved in some of my personal ambitions. I did my master’s degree there and in fact I even wrote my master’s thesis now during the quarantine and in the meantime I got pregnant there, so I came here to be with my mother, and the Corona happened. So I sat on the terrace on my little chair and finished my master thesis. I hold a Master’s degree in System Dynamics. I’m just networked and wired for systems thinking and I kind of just see and experience things through systems and trends. My brain works like that and I spend a lot of time in general now, because I work on self-development a lot and I’m very curious, so now that moment with psychology, those cubes somehow came together and I’m now again guided by some entrepreneurial spirit that I wasn’t afraid of, we said a while ago I was never a screw in the system, so I managed to translate it from some rebellion into something practical and applicable, that is, into some virtue. So systems dynamics is a very interesting science that is actually an extended arm of systems thinking-

Sanja Milosavljević: I have to interrupt you – can you tell us – because that system dynamics and system thinking are not so generally accepted terms here. It is something that through that academy of circular economics, I heard about something like that for the first time and got to know a little more, understood what the elements are, what the methodology is, how it is actually applied in everyday life and at work. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Well, of course. We are fantastic creatures. Our brain has fantastic abilities, and the way we translate our intelligence and make some tools has always been an extension of our intelligence. And then those tools in that feedback loop help us to be able to express our intelligence even more and to build the world and society. Now, system thinking is something that we almost didn’t reached because we took some simple steps, you have some basic communities, some basic tools, a man goes to hunt, a woman takes care of children, we made the first societies, it becomes more urban and so on. And the system itself becomes – all this in which we live – becomes much more complex. And, of course, now a man with his intelligence just realizes that he is hitting a wall. We can already read the consequences of some previous decisions on decision-making, the functioning of the organization, and then in fact we have produced something called systemic thinking. We just have the capacity for those things. System dynamics is simply a methodology that gives us tools that help us now to simply direct that way of thinking. We are not able to predict things very far, although we think we are, due to the system of unforeseen circumstances, feedback and what effect it has on some of our decisions. Is it a matter when we simply measure and look at how our relationship with our partner will be or maybe when we think about some of our career path where we may exclude – we think about career, about our qualities and we do not take into account the global trends in. The question of how technology is advancing, will there be work for us ten years from now. These are some systemic issues, some systemic problems. System thinking, with these various tools, simply helps us to put on paper what we have in our head in a certain way and then see what is actually happening. It is simply a mapping of our thinking. And it turns out to be very useful and it turns out to help us understand where we were, what we did, where we really are now, what are all these elements for us now, in some of ecosystems around us, at the family level, at the society level, at the level of an idea. So it is simply something that is applicable in everything and everywhere, so that we can actually perform more optimally in the future, whether it is for better, whether it is for bad, whether it is for worse, but in general, that is something that is our extended intelligence.

Sanja Milosavljević: Thank you for the explanation. For me, it is a very important topic. I don`t know whether it`s going to be important to everyone, but I think we need to talk about that. We have to introduce it from the early age. You are mum, you have a wonderful boy, we need to start talking to children about that, to introduce that method of thinking, to enable them not to be a tiny piece in the system, but to be able to see a greater picture, to understand where their place is in that greater picture, where is their place. Do you want to share – you told us that you finished master thesis, but how was the last year for you? I know that, you said it yourself that you are that resilient type of person, but this lasted for too long, and it just happened, that noise in media, people were terrified, scared, didn`t know how to react. How was it for you?

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: I have decided to stick to my plan. After 10 years, I packed my baby and my husband, who is Norwegian. We could return because of my mum, it is something that was imposed to my system, but my intention was to return to Serbia, and as I have my origins here I have that social responsibility impulse, I am just that kind of person. It is important to me, if I have – I want to be of service. It is in our nature, we are social beings and we neglected Corona and people were so selfish and I was devastated because of that. And I wanted to share with others what I have, as I think of it as my social responsibility. I believe that we are all born with super powers. The difference is, like you have one Novak Djokovic, who is an obvious talent, but also has a support system to help him, or a master on violin, and then we have others – painter, musician. But we have other people as well, if we don`t have that kind of talents, we have some other type, that is for sure, we have to find a way to know them. On the other hand, beside of the task of finding what one`s talent is, or portfolio of these talents, I think that the next step is one`s responsibility to create, to participate in the society, whether it is on level of whole population, or on the level of one town, one has to give oneself to that. So, looking at Norwegians and how they function, they helped me to make a difference between loving your close environment, your people and nationalism. Where we grow up, there are a lot of those negative lenses. I love my country, I love my people and it was – like, this is my blood and I love and respect everything else. But their love and patriotism actually reminded me what is that I don`t like, what is that I like and how beautiful our country is and what great potentials and capacities it has. Not just for the country, but also for the people who are integral part of that country. First, there is the idea, and you implement an idea, and that work produces new trends, we have actions and there are consequences. I found my place here, to be, in that sense a small piece in this system, to simply help people to open their minds and to show them that despite our society, like ours is – where somethings are intentionally placed to us and there is a drill in that negative thinking, sadness, that in a way rises exponentially, and I think it is. Actually, on a daily basis, with small changes in thinking, we can do something that is good for us, for our children, our grandchildren, society and the whole planet. Due to the fact that I am now in the field of sustainability, and am interested in tools, as I think that the best way is, when you have a mouse, when you have a hammer – there is a practical side to it, but to send you a feedback why it is so good to use something, and why it has to be on this exact height… My late grandma raised me, I am my grandma`s child, who barely knew how to write a signature, but she was a women of great breadth and what is very interesting, she was a grandma for everyone. And I always had that huge circle of friends, and when my grandma passed away there were more than hundred people on the funeral – my friends, and I couldn`t come as I was in Norway and couldn`t get the leave. She is a part of this story. I used this quarantine to form the team that very spontaneously and in an organic way formed, where we found the enthusiasm and with different motifs, and that is our Vene`s diagram. We met at the Academy for Circular Economy, we were the same generation, with Sanja and Delwin. We made an arrangement to build an application that is going to help us to try to throw away food less. There is something for me – and I hate throwing away food, but for some reason, chicken meet and lettuce are food that is throwing away the most. Here, in Serbia, a chicken meat is of a bad quality, and when you look at the expiry date it is OK, but when you smell it, it is not good, and you don`t play with this kind of things. And I know back when I was in Norway – that was a couple of years ago – I thought if grandma was here now, the first thing she would do, she would kill me for throwing the away. And the other thing would be like, hey, Sanja, pay some more attention and so on. And then I realized – so maybe we could have an app for someone to just send us some nudge like “hey you have this and that left in the fridge, save it, if you don’t want to give it to someone, do something with it”, but don’t throw it away. And we started to develop the whole idea and the whole structure of the application is like that – the idea was to scan a bar code or QR code, that was my initial idea, to actually pick up the date and all the information, but since there is no such thing, it is still a matter of manual insertion where for a start it may be like, huh, I have to do something manually but you don’t have to do for every food. It is enough to do it for eggs, cheese, milk, meat. For example.

Sanja Milosavljević: Those perishable foods that have a short shelf life, yes.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: That’s right, that’s right. And to send you a notification when it expires, but at the same time the thing is that you enter the price of that product so that then as you use your product, it sends you – or the notification gives you insight into the statistics on how much money you used it by eating, and how much ended up in the landfill because you threw it away. So with this financial incentive that we do not invent, it has simply existed since forever, it is actually working on that trigger to start a way of thinking and it is slowly starting to raise awareness of our attitude towards food in general, because, in a way, in this fast living lifestyle we have moved away from everything that is somehow, primordially valuable to us, then all that fast food, then this and that, but it’s about that – about that one automatism of not thinking on what principle we buy, why we choose it, in what conditions we buy – if you go shopping when you are hungry, that is the worst possible thing in the world. Then you buy everything what`s is in the store. So, in a way, the app is designed to be just a gift to all of us and for us to use it – now you have the commercial part, depending on it, it is now a business part – how much we will be recognized and at what point – does it exist – I know that we are still the only ones working on it, and I also know that some projects are being financed where it has not been developed yet, but because of some of them, money is being given elsewhere. I mean, I generally-

Sanja Milosavljević: Unfortunately.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Yes, but it’s part of the business. And now you play that game according to certain rules, but this also has one very important motive behind it. The thing is, we are ordinary citizens. We are some enthusiasts who have enough will and enough awareness to be open enough to hear some things. To meet people who are completely different from us, they come from completely different spheres, they speak a completely different language, but let’s find that switch somewhere that will be quite enough for us to start. So now everyone from some aspect of their own, will give some added value. And now, when someone switches to the commercial side, a business variant of all that is addressed. But the point is to motivate people. So we are ordinary citizens who had a problem and we realized how we could solve that problem. Problems are not solved by sitting and waiting from above for someone to solve your problem. It’s called growing up and taking responsibility for yourself, no matter the app, but for your personal life. And somehow I think that in all this chaos that reigns here, it is taken way from people – we are simply not all the same, someone has a greater consciousness, someone has a lower consciousness, but in general the social atmosphere and culture is not such as to stimulate individuality and maturation. It leads us to a collective depression that kills both creative thinking and system thinking on many levels, and as I would say, the confidence to go out and say something, and that is what we generally lack here – and not just here but everywhere in the world. And I think that no matter how bad the situation is here and everywhere else, I think there has never been a better time because there is freedom in the presence of instruments, people, and cooperation with people from all over the world to start-

Sanja Milosavljević: Well I think the Internet made it possible for us, of course. And I keep thinking – I’m the same, I don’t like throwing away food. And that’s it for me, both my mother and grandmother. For them, that is a sin. In that sense, you don`t do that. And I accepted that even after I got married, so now I have my family and I buy food, I fill the fridge, I do it very carefully and rationally. And how is it possible that we constantly complain that we are lacking money, that we have I don’t know – that our food or something else is expensive, and then we throw it away so much. So some are now- I haven’t checked so I can’t talk, I don’t want to talk by heart, but we throw away really large amount of food on an annual basis. In which electricity and water are consumed if nothing else, to produce food.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: That`s right. And some amount of CO2 footprint is made.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, we already made huge CO2 footprint.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: We are. That is-

Sanja Milosavljević: Why do we throw away food? Right? We whine and whine and then so easily, we throw away food worth 2 or 3 or 4 thousand dinars. It really doesn`t matter.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: We are returning to the beginning of the whole story. There are a lot of psychological elements here, but for a start, as we now know – there is a lot of marketing psychology on the side, where they position your food, how they make advertisements for you. They do that to you – we have become slaves of consumerism that you have to do something, you need to have something. Then you have a cultural moment. We like to offer food a lot. When you make it for patrons celebration, for birthdays, for weddings, I think that part is very difficult – for me it is the hardest. I know it too, when I celebrated Christmas and you don’t have that many guests and then I make food and freeze it. And then we eat that same food or you give it to some friends who like stuffed peppers or something like that. There are a lot of segments here. The point is that no matter why we’ve done it that way so far, we now have enough information to tell us we’re doing it and we know it’s not good, and this tool comes to us as that extended intelligence to help us how we might, as well, not to do that, among other things, in addition to knowing that it is not good to throw away food, that it is a sin, that even if you do not think about making some waste that somewhere down the line makes a big problem – you throw away money. As for money, especially in our country, the number of hungry people is growing day by day and people in the rural part of Serbia are dying and it is only known when a neighbor smells the odor from the house because of their pride and there are people that have nothing to eat. Those are terrible things. Terrible things- get out of Belgrade and ride in a circle of half an hour to an hour, so much fertile land and hungry people. These are systemic problems. It is a way of organizing the system, it is a way of enforcing certain policies, legislation and so on so that I don`t want to go into. These are some things that we cannot change directly. You can directly buy what you need, save for when you need it, and if you don’t need it, give it to someone. And then you see how much you actually saved, how much you didn’t throw away, and in time you actually realize that it has an effect on both society and the planet, and then you really know that you did something good. And most importantly, you break the prejudice that you are small and that you can’t do anything.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes. It’s kind of – we’re growing up now, maybe not you and maybe not me, but I wouldn’t want to generalize anyway, but I know a lot of people who are really like that – they’re so set up that they’re small and can’t do anything. So, like I am one person, I can’t do anything and then I won’t. Like nothing will change. And I always think, okay, you are one, I’m one, and there’s another one – we can make a group together. Something will happen if we are together. And how much is it for you – you mentioned carbon footprint and storage – that is, now we have nowhere to dispose our waste. What does this mean for you? As you can see – I’m not asking you to be a prophet and now give some solutions and spill wisdom – but…

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: I think-

Sanja Milosavljević: Why is that important? Why is it essentially important to start thinking about these things?

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Well, first of all, how hot it is today and yesterday and the day before yesterday. So that’s the first thing. You can’t function normally. It all has to do with climate change. Now let’s stop. Even if these climate changes had nothing to do with us, nothing at all – we are the best species on the planet, we would still try to do something to make this a better place. Right? Logically. It is not – the quality of life is at stake. We are living beings who react to the quality of life whatever it is and we look at it as being with our belly full, that we have clothes, that we are not cold, that have a roof over our heads and then everything else. I personally start from the fact that we can do better and we have instruments that are above us and that are made day by day so that they can help us to do better. You have that inner part that I’m focused on, that is about the way we think, how we should think and where we can actually see that we really can and maybe some things – just paying attention is half of the solution. The other half is now working on it, but when you discover that something you have done so far and you don’t have to do like that anymore, for example, I think that’s very important. I listened to some statistics. We were, Sanja, Delvin and I, we had the opportunity to present our EatMeUp app. It’s its name, to be a little bit catchy and for people to pay attention to it like “eat me whole”. We had the opportunity to present our story and our vision, and that was the Council for Ethical Respect, Veran Matić was re-elected president. And we’ve listened to some statistics which is very interesting now for example, because the number of humanitarian donations during the coronavirus, beyond Covid-based donations but for sick children and older people, has increased astronomically. At a time when your disposable income is declining, humanitarian donations are growing. It is just proof that we do not lack that primordial, natural element. It is true that there is no system, there is no network that allows you to do it on another level, but I want to say that this is a very good space, here in our country, specifically where personal commitment, connection as you and I we are now doing and exchanging our opinions. Each exchange is a new lesson that, if not directly, indirectly leaves an impression in you and you will, if nothing else, see that you have an interlocutor and know that you are not crazy and still see that you could do something – so everyone on their own level can do something. When we – if we go all the way now, we really climb really high, like we, we listen that Elon Musk is a man who has a huge amount of information on his disposal. That is very important, information is gold. The way he connects and networks things when you listen to him talk. I don’t know, Bill Gates. All in the sense – not glorifying them as persons, I just watch it and listen to what they say. They have their commercial moments that is not a part and topic of what we are talking about now. The picture is such that if we continue or if we slow down, it will be even warmer and the days will be even worse and we will be hot even more and people will fall on the street and our cars will explode on the road – no one wants that. You want it to be at least okay for you to be able to function, think and work, and everything else. Huge rains that fall in Belgrade, and then people are angry at the government exclusively. Although I am not enlightened and don`t have a passion for politics, it is a special story, there is one thing for me as someone who deals with analysis. I know that the Belgrade sewers – that’s something that everyone who works with architecture in the city will tell you – are totally uncluttered. We do not have a sewerage system with the capacity to be able to channel those amounts of water that fall per square meter at one time due to those huge rains. Of course, we should now have quality government, good logistics to do everything properly. I also lived in Bergen, the second largest city in Norway, I worked as an analysis consultant in the city and I know that it is very difficult to find ideal and even optimal solutions in a country that provides all possible means, educated people with high salaries and so on. The problem itself as a problem is difficult and that is a fact. But there is still a problem before that and the problem before that is that the climate changes that are happening, that is, those patterns that once less amount of rain used to fall and now it is falling more, the point is to look at a longer period of time. Not one year after another. But if we look 20, 40, 60 and 100 years back, we see that the amount of water that falls from the sky on the territory of Serbia and the city is drastically increasing. These floods we see now, it’s nothing. Those things will get worse. Now, what does that mean? That means- and all I said is the point is to pay attention to more things. It’s a system, it’s a system thinking. Everyone has their responsibility, let’s start with ourselves. Everything we do on a daily basis in relation to how much garbage we create, how we buy groceries, whether we buy plastic bags, whether we like to recycle, whether it is in our head to do even the minimum primary selection, the point is that every little move that is not 100% of us suddenly changes 1%. One percent of the seven billion people on the planet is a huge number. That’s what you said, those are very big changes. I think that now, on the other hand, you have an instinct for survival. Darwin said that neither the strongest nor the smartest species will survive, but the most flexible. Therefore, that ability of agility, fast learning, adaptability to keep up with what is happening, to see where we can and how much we can do, so let’s at least on a personal level that’s it – pick  up from your doorstep, and then move on. And I think that each of us, not only here but everywhere in the world, can do a lot. In developed European countries, it can be seen that people do it and they have in a way, as I would say, the principle of financial incentive to get a penalty. It just works that way with people and that’s totally okay. It is always possible to push here, that is where our government will not cut this and that. It’s all true. Here, we moved, we had a young acacia forest that was full of bees that we deliberately chose to be our environment in the city and it turned out that the unplanned that hectare was sold for 4 million euros, they cut down the whole forest. The temperature in front of the terrace is now a million degrees, the view is as if you are on Mars and we have dead bees falling on our terrace because they are doing a biocide. They put it on the ground. It’s a disaster. Now that I’m not going to take a hook and a hoe there and go fight with someone because I can’t change anything. I go back to myself and I think that should be a lesson to everyone as much as we can. I now have some path of my own, some ambition of my own and accordingly some of my actions that have led me to have some amount of information through knowledge and through schools and I will continue to do so. But my aunt, she doesn’t have all that, she was a flight attendant, now she is retired, but she does some primary selection of garbage. Not every time, but every third. It’s interesting now as well I don’t need an app for that I can’t do that, but yes you’re right about some things. I’ll actually see that I better not throw away food or buy so much to throw away, but I’ll look a little better at choosing what’s in the store, for example. It exists, it’s just a matter of that someone-

Sanja Milosavljević: But that’s really the point with these minimal changes. That is just a minimal change. I am sorry that there is no infrastructure in every place. We don’t have those bins everywhere. There are, and if everyone can find that big container for plastic, glass in their neighborhood, I don’t know what, but they have to walk 200-300 meters, it’s not right in front of our house. I think it might be ideal if it was so accessible to us. Although I wear a bag and maybe I don’t recycle, maybe I don’t always separate everything.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Yes, but until recently we didn’t wear bags. We are still overwhelmed with plastic bags. I have two bags in my bag sometimes they are not enough for me and I am alone because I do not drive. And then you have to buy a bag sometime. But before, there were only plastic bags all the time. It is not like that anymore.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, plastic bags all the time.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: That`s right.

Sanja Milosavljević: I mean, I have bags everywhere in car, wherever I am to be I need to have an extra one with me so I doesn’t happen so often to buy bags.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: I think the most important thing is – as I would like to say – hope. That is basically everything. Regardless of how it is now and what we don’t know, whether an asteroid will hit us, whether climate change is actually a consequence of lunar changes on an astronomical level, because we listened to a lecture on system dynamics where one speaks in favor of climate change and explain they happen because of some lunar changes – it’s a huge science behind that. But again, that doesn’t matter either. No need to throw away so much garbage. First of all, you shouldn’t let so much water flow – I’m a dictator in the house. So, with the AC – if we cooled our house – don’t open the window. So I teach my son. He goes around the house and turns on the lights. It’s interesting to him, but I tell him not to turn on the lights, we’re wasting electricity. The first time, the second time, the fifth time and so I explain that we will not consume electricity. I mean, it’s just a matter of why using something just because you may not pay directly, but you are paying indirectly. And then again, somewhere where it was produced, you have that primary waste that is being made, somehow there is an awareness that we should not be like parasites. You don’t have to do everything, constantly, always and in huge quantities. It’s that kind of modesty and now with food you know that very well. Because in addition to having your commercial part, you also deal with food psychology and people’s attitude towards food. We use food partially to satisfy our existential needs in terms of physiology. We load ourselves with food because of emotions, we load ourselves with food out of boredom, it is silly. Therefore, our entire functioning separates us from nature in a way, and in a way, it is very important that if we work on our self-development, we give back as much as possible. On the other hand, for the younger generations, I completely agree. I mean, earlier education was formed in relation to what kind of workforce you needed in relation to the industry you wanted and the economy to have in country. In addition to the mother tongue, foreign languages, searching for numbers such as mathematics, coding, food growing, entrepreneurship, basics of economics. These are some things that, in addition to, of course, the protection of the environment. These are some basic things that children need to get involved in education now, because the point is that through those prisms, children start to think. So, if nothing else, nowadays gives a lot of space for that alternative, in addition to regular education. Changing the education system at the level of one country is – I think you will change the health care system rather than the education system, I see it in Norway, it is very difficult. But here, for example, there are concessions because you have options for those alternative after-schools and so on. But simply, there is a space. I think that there is a space here that cannot be seen because it does not exist here – it is not illuminated. I will not go into the reasons for this. But I think that we, on our own initiative as a guerrilla and a little bit revolutionary, in a quality sense, illuminate it. Well, you will have the first ones who will hear, and then more people will hear, then the second ones will hear, and then the third ones will hear and the fourth ones will never want to hear. But that`s all okay, it’s all part of one bigger story.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well, yes, that’s part of a bigger story. I also agree with that, I look at children, for example, 10-11 years old, they are already even now ready in the sense that they can understand – they don’t have a system of abstract thinking, but they can understand when they are told about entrepreneurship. And they can understand when they are told about, let`s about ecology. But not in the sense of not throwing paper on the street, even my mom taught me not to throw garbage on the streets. I mean, keep it in your pocket and throw it in the bin. But to understand why it is important. Not only to learn to do something mechanically, but to understand, to develop awareness of why it is important to us. Why aren’t there more – the resources have dried up, we can’t use some natural resources forever – as there aren’t any. They just don’t exist anymore, we spent them. So I think that it should be introduced in some formal education as an extracurricular activity, and then certainly on mothers, aunts, grandmothers to teach them about that – to talk to them about it outside of school. Come on, we don’t have much time left and there are a lot of topics. How are you – now you are entering entrepreneurship? You gave me a really nice introduction. How do you experience entrepreneurship and did you pick something up while you were in Norway as a good, solid, model or are you just entering and now just learning and understanding the logic behind entrepreneurship and did you bury it in yourself so it is now the time, the time has simply come and you may be emotionally mature to step into entrepreneurship at all.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: For me, entrepreneurship is a way of thinking. Both your attitude towards problem solving and your attitude towards how you read things that are happening around you. And I am that – what Norway helped me because of that breadth and freedom in that sense, I actually realized that it’s no wonder that I’ve wanted it all my life, and I didn`t dare because that lack of self-confidence came from the fact that here they pull you towards an average collectivism where you are never good enough and there is always either a state or a church or socialism, or so on. And then if you are not part of it then you are a rebel and a revolutionary. And now it is packed into one negative package of rebellion. And in fact, the point is that people by nature simply have, as we said, some talents, some qualities and some powers. For me, entrepreneurship is not a company, it is not an administration, for me it is a structural tool through which you channel your behavior, way of thinking, approach to problems, and so on. Communication. Collecting information synergy, synthesis, logic and so on. And they are just a tool, a prospectus through which you simply channel it all so that now you exist somewhere as a legal entity in a market. And I think there are people who do it great. For me, an entrepreneur is an innovator, not an administrator. Now, basically, formally, entrepreneurship implies both.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, you said that very nice – entrepreneurship in its core is an innovation. You make solutions for problems.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Better the solution, bigger the paycheck. It’s a commercial part of it all because that’s just how our whole world works. The part that is interesting to me in entrepreneurship is individuality. Flexibility. A constant challenge in working with people in communication, in challenging my mental models and understanding in relation not only to what is fundamental, I do not challenge it at all, I already know that it is so. I am almost 42 years old. But in relation to the environment, we have to be completely adaptable and see where we are, what we are, what is happening, in which direction it all goes and what potential the people around us actually have, as long as we share a common vision, where is the point that we do not share the vision and what it means. For me, nothing is final and I think it’s all a matter of one flow and one dynamic. That doesn’t mean that on a daily basis I don’t get to pull my hair out of my head because of some nonsense that gets in my way because it takes up my time, but then I have my own ways of getting back into my balance, I accept that as part of the story and part of the system, the game I got into, and not as something that stops me but simply as an extra task. Because entrepreneurship is problem solving 24-7 and for me it is life. The confluence of my private and life circumstances is a completely different story. But it all taught me that this is fun for me, to function this way. It is a very big risk. I left – by acquisition now, if you look practically, I left Norway, I have their papers, I finished it for myself. It’s all a matter of work and commitment. Ten years in Norway has not been easy. Not at all – as much as you can have some support or something. First, not every seed is for every soil, not every soil is for every seed. Somewhere you will always be a stranger depending – wherever you are you will always be a stranger, and you are a stranger here. The system itself gives some benefits and on the other hand there is a huge pressure. Only then does it stifle creativity. So somehow this area of ​​ours here is a kind of guerrilla, but it gives me that moment where there are some holes through which I, if nothing else, will try, and for me it’s worth enough to decide for that game and just throw my cubes there. Along the way, I am constantly learning, meeting both phenomenal and less phenomenal people, but I am getting to know life. It’s the whole function of everything and somehow I see we are definitely different and as soon as we are different there is a reason for all that. And then let’s see if we already live in a society that already has the field of economy and the field of capitalism and business, why not. And there are now various visions. The point of the whole story – I’m always – part of my mission in life is to animate people and let them see it in some of their own ways – because I’m a bit of a fool. Someone is a fool for some things, but the point is to be crazy and to be a fool but by giving something of yourself because you can certainly do it. And not by destroying yourself or something else, because destruction, although it is a characteristic of human nature, does not have to be the primary choice. So you have the opportunity to choose for those things again. But I think that somewhere in the end everything comes back to ourselves – how much you work on yourself development, and then in accordance with that energy and that content, you fill all those forms. Administration, bureaucracy, business, relationships with people, and the patience you build and so on. Here I will give you, for example, the thing that is most common that I personally meet with people who were previously present on a personal level but are now present on a professional level as well – people are terribly lacking in flexibility and agility. If they have to change. Out of fear. Now, that fear is on a psychological level, you just have to catch to something so that you have to do something and that “but that’s how it’s done here”, is like that. Well, we won’t do that. We will see how it is done, so we will respect in our strategy what the foundation is in general – that’s how it should be, you will not correct the river flow. But the point of our work and the scope of our product is actually some culture. As for all that, part of it – since at the same time – I have my own company that deals with systems thinking, consulting, I also work on content materials in cooperation with the European Union for people who hold and teach others about systems thinking. And now there’s a range of topics that are fantastic and I hope we get a chance to talk about that and talk further. To animate people, to do some workshops in nature, outside, a bunch of some beautiful things can be done. Where in a simple, playful way that is actually the nature of human learning, we actually receive very large and complex ideas. So it’s about the way we learn and a lot can be done. So how it is done, we call it business as usual in system dynamics. There is something in the system mapping that is a constant reference point that we will not work like that anymore because we see how far it has taken us, but now it is the art of both professions and living and cooperation and the answers of all stakeholders present at that moment. What can we actually do? And my kind of message would be for everyone to always check the status quo. To work on yourself development first and be smart in the way you do it. No need to fly your chest out on a bullet I did it when I was younger, we are that generation. So after one big idealistic disappointment, I just realized that it shouldn’t be done that way, so it took a long time until I actually realized that you can stay in all that, but you’ll just change your methods, be a little more elegant in those approaches, and find the right things and the right ideas through which you will channel that huge creative energy and actually through love and out of love for someone, for something to do and bring something good and not out of revolt, hatred, revenge and so on.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes. I listen to you carefully, otherwise you use – you choose words that have a positive connotation. So even when you say guerrilla and when you say rebellion, you take away that negative connotation, that is, you take away its destructiveness. Because really when something is done out of destruction, it can’t bring anything good. It just can’t. Behind that is great sadness, not some good, great and quality idea.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: I have to add one thing to be said now. In every system and in nature, destruction is the beginning of a new cycle. But it is one thing, for example, when we have autumn where the leaves turn yellow, fall, feed that land and then return. Human destruction comes from very negative impulses. These negative urges are a manifestation of a lack of love and care for oneself and many other psychological things of which there are very many. Because it is a part of human nature as much as darkness is, we somehow know it more, light is just as great only that we, if we look globally, globally at a crossing where a lot of people open up through various approaches – someone through religion, someone through philosophy, someone through Buddhism, someone through innovation. But it is all that consciousness that moves us where there is still a collective will. It is the most important. If I want something, I would like to give it a huge power of that will, here. To plant it somehow – the tree grows for 20 years. It takes time. But it’s like in that movie. You do one good thing to three people and each of them should do the same to three others. It is an exponential growth. That’s right. And those can be very small things that can be repeated. You do a good thing every month – it doesn’t have to be the same and not to the same three people. And if that existed as a rule, the effects would be seen very quickly. So small steps through numbers and we can a make changes. As for the policy-maker and the legislator, of course you have to have an ear. But to get an ear, you have to fight for it. That’s how I look at it. So if there is to be a popularization, it’s a matter of strategy, it’s a different story, and now not everyone is for it, but some of us who are, we have the responsibility to make room for those who are not and have something to give so that together, we can sit at a table to be able to succeed in at least some things. Right now, when there are pioneers, I was in a group, for the local challenge of pioneers, worked in practice – I worked at Elektropionir. So this is our energy community. And Elektropionir has been advocating for years that individual users can install solar panels. First, they do not need a huge administration to do that, and to connect to the network, in order to return the excess energy that is produced. That was impossible a couple of months ago, but I am very happy and proud that, given the circumstances, I simply had the opportunity to be part of that working group that, as a task on a Pioneers in Practice program, did a thing that actually was a practical work and some of the proposed models of functioning in relation to the participants themselves, and their legal organization and so on, the Law on sources and production of electricity from renewable sources has changed in Serbia. And you can do that now, it’s just a matter of the legislator asking that the return of the excess energy should be done through a legal body, but that’s how electric communities are organized, such as cooperatives, such as agricultural cooperatives, as they still are. There is a certain organizational form and then through intermediaries who are private companies, they buy that energy, pay and you actually have the chance to get that something. So it can be done. But we know very little about that.

Sanja Milosavljević: Well, on Friday – not on Friday, in two days there will be an episode – it will be an episode with Danijela Isailović, who is the manager of the Association for Renewable Energy Sources in Serbia, and she just talked about it. You have to start from somewhere, simply in these things you have to start and what I am very glad is that she came at all and agreed to speak here in Mondopreneur because when you have a professional talking to a professional, when you have two experts who talk about some topic, then a third person, I can’t say an ordinary person, but an ordinary little man can’t understand it. And on some level like this, she is an expert, I am not. She talks and explains, and now a number of small people will hear that again – that means not experts in the field of energy, but you and I, ordinary listeners, and so on – we will just start talking about it. I mean, we have to start from somewhere-

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: That’s right. The way an ordinary person asks a question is the point of getting such an answer. The point of all experts. And that’s one of the things that is one of my operational goals in what I do, and that’s systemic thinking. The point is to reduce complex things to simple level because the goal is for the average person to understand.

Sanja Milosavljević: Yes, I agree with you absolutely.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: That should go down to the level of an ordinary person because we, ordinary people are in the majority. It can`t be that scientists they talk to each other and they agree on everything. That is great, they have good salaries they have their diplomas, and what have they done with that? They didn’t do anything.

Sanja Milosavljević: Nothing, yes. I mean-

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Make a bridge, put it on some lower levels, to the ground.

Sanja Milosavljević: To the ground, yes. To nature. Than you Aleksandra.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: Thank you immensely. It is always a pleasure for me to talk to you and-

Sanja Milosavljević:  Me too, yes. Me, too.

Aleksandra Lazović-Lønningen: I hope that this project of yours will continue, this is a fantastic story and for a start we send some words, we send and show that there are some people and that additionally motivates others and you do a huge job, because you are actually a facilitator for those things.

Sanja Milosavljević: I never- you see, I never thought about it at all. In that manner. Dear people, you watched Aleksandra from Belgrade. In the Mondopreneur podcast. You can follow us on all social networks, you can listen to us on all audio platforms. And of course you can subscribe to our YouTube channel, just type Mondopreneur. Be good and in good health and see you in a week.