Sunday, December 5, 2010

Entrepreneurial Enlightenment and Insight

“Ideas are a dime a dozen” is a very stupid saying just like “work smarter than harder”.

Many of my math professors said that you know more or less all the math you are going to need to know, but you need to be able to communicate it (that is, you need to be able to communicate math). That’s the true goal of the master’s degree program.

Understanding “Ideas are a dime a dozen” is the same thing that many entrepreneurs know but can’t express in an effective manner. Communicating is harder than knowing.

Here is how you get it to knowing that “Ideas are a dime a dozen” (or at least, how I’m trying to try to sell it to you):

Sit in a business.

Watch the people.

Be creative on ways to make them awesome. What would make the business better? What could you sell them to make them better?

Do this every day, and you will have lots of ideas.

Once you have an idea, you need to be able to execute on it. Execution is the art of getting things done and progressing the state of a business from conception to cash flow.

I have a torrent of ideas, so I’m set for life in the idea category. Now, how can I execute. Here is a generic three step business plan.
  1. Build it (Engineering)
  2. Find Customers (Marketing)
  3. Sell it (Sales)
Once you see the pipeline, everything in the world starts to make a lot of sense. Everyone has a happiness function, H, and a life-is-shit function, S, that they use to make decisions.

Your goal is to maximize H-S.

If the market is small, then you can be a one super awesome consultant.

If the market is big and mundane, then you can build a company.

If the market is big and complex, then you can build a firm.

Once you have ideas, how do you execute in #1, #2, #3? How do you build it? Do you know someone that just builds things? How do you find customers? Do you know someone that can network or go door to door? How do you sell it? Do you know someone that can sell ice to an eskimo?

Once you can answer these questions, you can build a business. However, you must keep in mind that the people in the business are the only true asset it has. Do you have the right people doing the right jobs that they want to do? That last bit is basically my digested form of Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (which is a good book, but you have to put yourself in their shoes to understand what they are saying. It’s not an easy book to read.)

Once you start to have 10+ ideas, you can either just blindly following them (I'm very guilty of this in my life as a coder), or you measure them and pick the best one. What is the best one? After-all you have your own H-S function. It could be by impact on the world, revenue, profit, job creation, or just plain fun.

I hope that I have communicated how to gain entrepreneurial insight into how to manufacture ideas. This is why I write my blog, so I can level up my communication capabilities. If you find yourself like me, knowing things but feeling an inability to express them, then you need to start writing now.

3 comments:

  1. Good afternoon,

    I don't get the line "That’s the true goal of the master’s degree program". Is it understanding that ideas are dime a dozen? Communicating more effectively?

    Anyway, I disagree with both these ideas, at least in what I did in my masters degree. I got to learn more in-depth topics, to be able to make a dent in some problem. Communicating, although very useful & effective is nowhere taught or spoken about: it is like LaTeX, you should pick it along the way.

    But as you say, ideas are a dime a dozen. In my office wall I have like 20 post-its with math ideas I may consider studying in some more depth, or asking someone more knowledgeable than myself.

    Cheers,

    Ruben
    Latest in my blog: The Emacs 30 Day Challenge

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  2. @RBerenguel I think the goal is to be able to communicate the details of math. That is, writing and communicating math is how math gets executed.

    For instance, you have a great idea, then you have to put it in a form that communicates truth or false-hood. You have to convince yourself then others.

    Great proofs are just that. They communicate the idea effectively.

    For instance, I have an idea on why NP != P. I need to communicate the details. I feel I know why, and so I need to work on it to find the words.

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  3. I like this post. I have been guilty of following ideas into products as well (far too many times).

    I would like to suggest a minor modification to your 3 step business plan:


    1.Build a little
    2.Market a little
    3.Sell a little
    4. Iteration 1-3 till you get to a reasonable stable state.

    Many bad ideas fall off at 2/3 stage and many good ideas are born out of these steps of validation.

    Like some one said - "To a have a good idea, you need to have many ideas and to have a great idea, you need many good ideas". The ratio I saw was 1000-1 (raw ideas to great idea).

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