Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Opportunity Space Entrepreneur

The entrepreneurial spirit is probably the most important driver for a future economic drive. The world is changing too fast in forms of new competitors, new markets, new needs, new challenges (facing the world). Entrepreneurs look for the new find solutions where nobody else is looking or taking the future chances for real.

And yet the entrepreneur often tends to present the "real" chances of her/his innovative approach. PeterDrucker in his 1985 book "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" writes about the German chemist who developed Novocain the first local anesthetic. But the doctors he approached didn't want to change from full anesthetic to this.

Then suddenly dentists used to practice this - and liked it. He got made on that and traveled up and down Germany to give speeches about not using Novocain in the dentist field.

The learning from that: you don't like what you have not planned for. Even as an entrepreneur (!)

What could be the reason for that: when having found something interesting to build a business around one often closes in just to not let the information spill in the larger mass and focuses on just a single field of use. The fear of scaling it up, or having worked for the "wrong" purpose sets entrepreneurs under stress - still 25 years after Peter Drucker's writing.

The way to overcome the "thinking stuck": talk with people who are not your possible competitors, ask people in the restaurant, train, conference what they may think of the idea of encounter this or that (the innovation you have in mind) - spread it in as widely context you may can.

Especially if it is a new idea, not yet in use you may feel uneasy telling people about an idea.

Just dare to do - you can only win :-) Some call it  S E R E N D I P I T Y or Innovation on the Edge

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