Business Solutions

Expert Entrepreneurs are like Master Chefs who are at their very best when first viewing a variety of diverse ingredients and dared to throw together whatever dish practicality and the mind’s eye conjure up. To contrast, corporate leaders will always decide they are going to make dependable Swedish meatballs. They then go on to shop, measure, mix, and finally cook Swedish meatballs in the most pragmatic, efficient, and cost-effective manner.

That is not to say Entrepreneurs don’t have goals, only that those goals are broad and—like luggage—may shift during flight. Rather than meticulously segment customers according to potential return, they itch to get to market as quickly and cheaply as possible. Entrepreneurs are inherently impatient with anything that smacks of extensive and highly-detailed planning, particularly customary traditional market research.

Pursue “Partners” First

Entrepreneurs’ penchant for “doing the doable” and evolving the “doable project” from point to point is patent in their methodology to “partnerships.” Meanwhile corporate executives typically know exactly where they are going and follow a given mapped out path to get to completion. Many times with just the opposite guidance, Entrepreneurs permit whomever they encounter along the business journey, whether suppliers, advisers, customers and others to help shape their businesses, with a more open mind to the possible.

An important ally to Entrepreneurs among the potentially influential partners or allies are first customers. The Entrepreneurs have a built in anticipation for customer help on product design, sales, and identifying preferred suppliers. Some even view their very first customers as also their best investors.

Expert Entrepreneurs have learned the hard way over the years that “having even one real customer on board with you is better than knowing in a hands-off way, 10 things about a thousand customers.

Understand that simply gathering information from a large number of potential customers tends to increase all the different things you could do, but doesn’t tell you anything about what you should do. Many Entrepreneurs enjoy the stay close approach to customer interaction by the observation of a few customers as they work or even actually working closely alongside them.

Corporate executives, on the other hand, generally envision a much more traditional time-honored vendor-customer interaction, such as focus groups.

Executives rely less on firsthand insights, because they can afford to place bets on multiple segments and product versions, and Entrepreneurs of course, don’t have that luxury and are many times better off because of it with firsthand information and important market insights.

By the time Entrepreneurs start seeking investment, of course, they should be as far inside competitors’ heads as they can get. Although they tend not to spend much energy in the exhibition of concern about any existing competition, Entrepreneurs worry less about competitors because they see themselves not in the thick of a market but on the fringe of one, or in the creation of a new market entirely.

No Limits

Corporate managers traditionally believe that to the degree they can forecast the future, they can influence it. In contrast, Entrepreneurs have strong faith in that to the point they can control the future, they simply don’t need to predict it.

To many in the conventional corporate world, that may sound like monumental arrogance, but it is simply a manifestation of Entrepreneurs’ confidence in their capacity to recognize, respond to, and ability to reshape opportunities as they develop. Entrepreneurs simply thrive on unforeseen events and contingencies, and feel limited and stifled with even small amounts of information.

When provided with the same information as one another and as the corporate executives, Great Entrepreneurs have created opportunities in markets including academic institutions, venture capital firms, consultancies, government agencies, and even the military.

Finally, as much as the ability to conceive new products and services, it is the unique propensity to work their magic off whatever ideas or materials are at hand that genuinely characterizes and defines Great Entrepreneurs as an ingeniously creative breed and perpetual optimists.

But if you’ve ever been associated with or known a Great Entrepreneur, you almost certainly knew that already.