Six Things Entrepreneurs Know That Are Dead Wrong

A great article from the Forbes blog. It may just change your the way you, as an entrepreneur, think about your business.

Things Entrepreneurs Know That Are Dead Wrong
Martin Zwilling, Startup Professional's Musings
June 26, 2011

All true entrepreneurs operate off a set of tenets that are built into their psyche, or drilled into them from training and mentors. These are represented by sayings like “You never get anywhere unless you take a chance” and “Passion and persistence are the keys to success,” Unfortunately, there are still other old, reliable tenets that don’t work anymore.

In a new book by Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie from the Columbia Business School, “Designing for Growth,” the authors encourage managers to think more like designers. I assert that designers have a lot in common with entrepreneurs, since both must innovate and start a deep understanding of what their customer really wants (“customer-centered”).

In most other respects, design thinking is the opposite of business thinking. For example, businesses must deal with reality as fixed and quantifiable, whereas design deals with subjective experience and a social constructs. Entrepreneurs need to bridge both these worlds, and the authors outline key business management myths that usually limit startup thinking:

1. Myth: Think big. There are always pressures to be sure an opportunity is big enough, but most really big solutions began small and built momentum. To seize really new opportunities, it is better to start small and find a deep, underlying human need to connect with. A better maxim for entrepreneurs is: Focus on meeting genuine human needs.

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