Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship With A Lemon Twist
Change is the main source of growth and opportunity.
Problems define markets. Opportunities arise from frustrations, inconveniences and agitations.
Entrepreneurial thinking is the mindset that recognizes and acts on opportunities.
Entrepreneurship is the collection of methods and metrics used to create, deliver and capture value in these evolving pools of opportunity.
This is a road map that will enable you to both recognize and act on opportunity. Enjoy the journey.
There are many factors which contribute to Startup success. Team, Timing, Funding, Business Model and Idea represent the broadest categories for entrepreneurial success.
In a high level survey performed by Bill Gross the founder of the first US-based startup accelerator IdeaLab, he analyzed 200 startups looking at these five factors. He concluded that the number one reason for success was “Timing” all other factors being equal.
Getting the timing right is essential.
Your mission is to find the shortest path to the pot of gold. Finding your entrepreneurial Zen shortens that path. It requires five key ingredients:
1. The Right Mindset– to align attention, intention and action. The right mindset enables you to recognize and act on opportunity, and perhaps more importantly helps you to manage your emotions when the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” befall you and your team.
2. The Right Team – Startups live and die by the people that bring them to life. The founding team is the prime mover of the idea from heart and mind to market. It needs to have three roles actively engaged to have any real chance for success: The visionary, the Hustler, and the Hacker. These roles are not optional. They help make your team fundable.
3. The Right Methods– to test, validate and prove the value of your innovative idea.
4. The Right Metrics – to track and advance your innovative idea using key performance indicators that confirm the economic viability of your startup.
5. The Right Timing – to ensure that the value of your idea is delivered in the form of a product or service at the optimal time for maximum growth.
There is a sixth ingredient that preparation meeting opportunity feeds — luck! Silicon Valley is littered with worthless stock options. Broken dreams, busted schemes and battered themes. Lots of smart, savvy people fail to find the pot of gold. Don’t be one of them. Let synchronicities find you. Be prepared. Be lucky. Find your entrepreneurial Zen.
