The Strategy Skills Podcast: Management Consulting | Strategy, Operations & Implementation | Critical Thinking

Neri Karra Sillaman, entrepreneurship advisor at the University of Oxford and author of Pioneers: Eight Principles of Business Longevity from Immigrant Entrepreneurs, discusses why immigrant-founded companies are disproportionately successful and tend to last longer than their counterparts. Drawing on her experience as a former child refugee and on research that began with her PhD, she explains how longevity is built through clear vision, perseverance, community, shared value, and disciplined decision-making. She begins with the formative role of vision. At age eleven, while living in a refugee camp, education became her "north star." That clarity helped her interpret rejection not as failure but as "not yet," a mindset she later observed repeatedly among immigrant entrepreneurs. Clear intent, she argues, allows setbacks to redirect effort rather than extinguish it. The conversation then turns to the principles she identified through interviews with immigrant founders of companies such as Chobani, Duolingo, W