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Lateral Sparks, the weekly quiz from YourStory, tests your domain knowledge, business acumen, and lateral thinking skills (see the previous edition here). In this 73rd edition of the quiz, we present issues tackled by real-life entrepreneurs in their startup journeys.

What would you do if you were in their shoes? At the end of the quiz, you will find out what the entrepreneurs and innovators themselves actually did. Would you do things differently?

Check out YourStory’s Book Review section as well, with takeaways from over 355 titles on creativity and entrepreneurship, and our weekend PhotoSparks section on creativity in the arts.

Q1: Drone requirements

Precision, balance and efficiency are key requirements for drone players. They also need to factor in regulatory issues in terms of access zones and permissions. What’s another requirement for the drone industry, as the number of drones in use increases?

Q2: Gender representation in tech

Gender imbalance can impact product innovation in an industry, since it may fail to incorporate the needs of a diverse set of users and integrate their perspectives. But in the high-tech industry, there is another serious risk of women’s underrepresentation—what is that risk?

Q3: Developer productivity

Developer productivity depends not just on core skills and talent but also on developer environments and tools. A plethora of tools has emerged here to help developers—but this also opens up the challenge of tool management. How can this be tackled?

Q4: Business sustainability

Sound unit economics, loyal customers, and competitive moats help a business become sustainable. These days, sustainability also includes issues of environmental impact. What are other key measures of sustainability?

Q5: The long journey to success

Passion and inspiration help entrepreneurs, creators and athletes succeed in their long and winding journeys. Resilience for bouncing back from failures and mistakes also helps. What’s another key requirement for success?

Answers!

Congratulations on having come this far! But there’s more to come—answers to these five questions (below), as well as links to articles with more details on the entrepreneurs’ solutions. Happy reading, happy learning—and happy creating!

A1: Drone requirements

“The requirement for situational awareness has become a necessity, and drone pilots, regulators, and controllers need real-time information about the drones in the sky,” Ankit Kumar, CEO of Skye Air, explains.

The startup has developed a cloud-based traffic management system that connects and communicates with all types of drones. Read more here about how it provides situational awareness and traffic management to drone operators across the airspace.

A2: Gender representation in tech

“Many industry experts worry that if women continue to be underrepresented in the technology industry, the tech products and algorithms driving the future will contain an inherent bias against women,” cautions Nimisha Dua, CHRO, Grip.

This is due to their conspicuous underrepresentation or even absence in designing the technologies of the future. Read more here about how to improve women representation in high-tech industries.

A3: Developer productivity

“Developers are depending on more and more tools to get their work done while engineering costs are burgeoning,” observes Naomi Chopra, CEO of Hatica. This makes the developer experience and productivity a critical problem to solve for all organisations.

Hatica’s workflow solution integrates and communicates with all the tools that developers use, including Github, JIRA, and collaboration apps. Read more here about how data-driven insights can uncover bottlenecks, allocate resources efficiently, and preempt team burnout.

A4: Business sustainability

“Long-term business sustainability does not solely depend on ‘figures’ but also on sound legal, financial, and ethical corporate governance,” according to Sowmya M, Partner, and Abhilasha S G, Associate, at King Stubb and Kasiva.

“Ensuring startups are built on sound value systems is important, whereby due compliances and corporate governance are followed strictly throughout their business operations,” they add. Read more here about the consequences of bad governance, and how to stay sustainable.

A5: The long journey to success

“Discipline is the hardest thing to do but key to success. Strive for discipline in what you do. When you stay disciplined, you open the door to freedom,” according to Axio’s Co-founder and Ironman Triathlon enthusiast Gaurav Hinduja.

“In sports, the main thing is to be disciplined. Be focused and dedicated,” affirms Olympian Manika Batra. Read more about enablers and drivers of success here.

YourStory has also published the pocketbook ‘Proverbs and Quotes for Entrepreneurs: A World of Inspiration for Startups’ as a creative and motivational guide for innovators (downloadable as apps here: Apple, Android).