entrepreneurial thinking

May 28, 2015

When did entrepreneurs become so incurious?

Originally published on May 8, 2015 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/day-to-day/when-did-entrepreneurs-become-so-incurious/article24310344/

Entrepreneurs are supposed to be the mavericks of the business world. They’re the idea generators. The marchers to different drummers. The innovators who drive the economy forward, by starting businesses and launching new products and services. They redefine technology and change the world around us.

At least, that’s how I’ve always thought of them.

Lately, I’m starting to wonder if some entrepreneurs are losing their sense of curiosity, along with that distinctive maverick swagger that makes them such crucial builders in the business ecosystem.

My clues? At the seminars, workshops and business events that I’ve been attending recently, more of the attendees seem to come from big companies – and fewer and fewer come from small and medium-sized businesses. It’s disappointing really.

Personally, I’m happy to learn from companies large or small. And I’m sure that event organizers don’t really care who buys their tickets. But from the perspective of learning and sharing of ideas, I believe that everybody loses. Large companies appreciate the candid, fresh voices of true entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs can always learn something new from one another, as well from the attendees of the national and international organizations that we all hope to grow up to be.

In my column last month, I noted the stunning reality that 80 per cent of new businesses fail. While there are a host of reasons for all these fatalities, I believe that one of the very real answers is that, at the slightest taste of success, many entrepreneurs become complacent and incurious.

We allow ourselves to get lost in our little business bubbles, relying on today’s products and services to drive future success. Let’s be honest, we can get so focused and myopic that we often neglect to do the things that earned us our success in the first place – getting out of the office, meeting people and asking as many big-picture questions of ‘the crowd’ as we can.

It is a lovely notion to think that we can hole ourselves up in our new business and bide our time till the big ‘cash-out’ at the end of the road. But this tactic isn’t practical in an economy that demands continuous improvement, refinement and even replacement of our products and services as a matter of course.

Consider the digital picture frame. Ten years ago, these electronic photo albums were all the rage. Today they’ve been replaced by smart phones and tablets. And how about those Bluetooth headsets? Just a few years ago when the laws began to restrict drivers’ cellphone use, we couldn’t buy these items fast enough. Today, it’s hard to find a new car that doesn’t have hands-free built into it, complete with voice-assist and even access to intelligent personal assistants such as Apple’s Siri – rendering the headset embarrassingly passé.

Bottom-line: today, everything moves from ‘the rage’ to ‘remember when’ before you can say “Trivial Pursuit!”

You need to top up your product and service offerings just like you change the oil in your car. When we neglect to change the oil, our engines stutter, seize and ultimately die.

It’s no different in business. No business succeeds without revenue and, ultimately, profit to reinvest in the future. Revenue is generated by satisfied and engaged customers. If you neglect to constantly re-engage your customers with the new and different, they will quickly find a competitor who does.

If you want to think about it as a continuum, then understand that innovation drives marketing, which drives sales. If you take innovation out of the equation, your funnel loses the raw material that drives growth.

Sorry if this sounds doomsday-ish, but, unfortunately, innovation is no longer a nice to have. It’s a very real need. As our markets evolve faster and faster we have to ramp up our innovations and improvement, not cut back. Innovation isn’t an occasional remedy, like a cough drop, but an everyday necessity, like water.

All this means that innovation – sparked by curiosity and fuelled by constant communication with customer – has become a core competency of today’s successful businesses.

If you’re not ready to give your customers what they want, keep in mind that innovation is also an engagement tool for your team. Today’s employees want to be involved in exciting and meaningful improvement projects.

When I went into business I was taught that to succeed, I had to join a company, put one foot in front of the other, keep my head down and shut my mouth. Today we know that management has no monopoly on creativity. Everyone in the organization deserves and expects to have a voice, to engage in ideation and add value beyond the day-to-day.

If your company culture has moved from thinking, questioning and dreaming to just doing, watch out. Your best team members will gradually disengage, and likely revert to one of the first skills they ever learned: walking.

Revenue, profits, engaged customers and motivated teams are all crucial to your business. Keeping them strong takes constant feeding and renewal. That’s why it’s so important to hold your head up, sniff the air for new ideas, and keep questioning. Only the curious can change the world.

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Category: Entrepreneurship, Icicle, Spyder Works

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Apr 21, 2015

Is crowdfunding the new tech bubble? Or just a good old-fashioned junk bond?

Originally published on April 10, 2015 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-digital/innovation/is-crowdfunding-the-new-tech-bubble-or-just-a-good-old-fashioned-junk-bond/article23823686/

Despite the headline, I’m a proponent of crowdfunding and believe it can bring innovative ideas to market. Fundamentally, I feel that new forms of financing provide additional access to much-needed capital and bring healthy competition to the lender market, benefits that all entrepreneurs and inventors can appreciate.

So why the negative headline? It’s not meant to be sensational. I have real worries about the mania that seems to strike the markets with every shiny new opportunity. Some would call it systemic greed. Others may be more forgiving, and call it the cost of innovation. Whichever camp you choose, it’ impossible to deny that there’s extreme pressure on everyone in business to return continuous, increasing profits to shareholders – whether the shareholders are ourselves, our families or the public markets.

Crowdfunding, of course, is the rapidly growing practice of funding creative projects or startup ventures by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, usually via specialty websites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. Maybe the early days of crowdfunding were the best, when early adopters and other hipsters invested in new projects to receive finished products, T-shirts and other promotional, non-financial “perks.” But that’s the past, not the future.

My fears started to heighten at a recent panel discussion I attended on the emergence of equity crowdfunding – the practice of “mass” funding of opportunities in return for equity. One panelist urged the quick adoption of this new financing frontier because he didn’t want Canadian businesses and investors to fall behind or lose out on this incredible opportunity.

While the parallels are not exact, this rhetoric struck me as reminiscent of the rise of junk bonds, the 1999 Tech Bubble, and yes, the subprime mortgage scandals that drove us into the Great Recession, the economic slough from which many individuals, companies and countries are still just emerging.

I want to remind would-be investors that, on average, about 80 per cent of business startups fail. Even successful companies have a success rate of about 15 per cent on new product ideas. More often than not, new business initiatives just don’t work out the way that we want them to.

If you’re taking fun money from your cookie jar to support a cause you believe in or a new product you love, then crowdfunding provides you a new way to back your convictions that has never existed before. But you should understand the odds.

As securities regulators approve equity crowdfunding – probably by restricting how much investors can invest per year, and how much companies can raise – it seems likely that today’s low-stakes “pin money” culture is going to change. Investors, by definition, want a return on their money. If crowdfunding truly expands beyond the hobbyist market, it will only be because a consistent percentage of issuers actually create incredible value for their shareholders. But how likely is that to happen?

You can say this for “old-school” backers. The professionals, whether they’re banks, venture capitalists or experienced angel investors, push you to truly understand and articulate your project and its potential market. They pressure you to justify the risk and return involved. Without that initial and ongoing demand for due diligence, crowdfunding will likely create a less disciplined marketplace in which success becomes even harder to attain, and failures increase in number.

On the other side of the deal, if you are successful in seeking capital, understand that you will now have to report to “the many.” You’re the custodian of the hopes and dreams and expectations of people whose motivations you don’t know. You have an obligation to keep them in the loop – and can only hope to keep them happy.

Never underestimate the impact of the mob, the Web or social media on your company and its reputation if something goes wrong. Face-to-face funding may have been harder to get, but that was not necessarily a bad thing – for you or the markets.

Bottom-line: Crowdfunding is an exciting new wrinkle in innovation funding. But it won’t change the rules of the marketplace: investors expect value for their money. Nothing comes free. The more expectations you create, the more your crowds will expect you to deliver.

I am a huge proponent of new financing mechanisms, including crowdfunding. I simply don’t believe in the tooth fairy.

I do believe in the notion of ‘buyer beware, seller take care.’ With a little more common sense, and less frenzy, I believe crowdfunding will help to bring a lot of remarkable innovation to market. Without that discipline, I fear we’ll see a speedy series of failures, losses and resentment that will burst crowdfunding’s balloon faster than you can say “count me in”.

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Category: Entrepreneurship, Spyder Works

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Mar 31, 2015

‘Fail fast, fail often’ may be the stupidest business mantra of all time

Originally published on March 13, 2015 as a Guest Column in The Globe and Mail: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-business/sb-growth/day-to-day/fail-fast-fail-often-may-be-the-stupidest-business-mantra-of-all-time/article23407206/

Who in his or her right mind would build a philosophy around failure? Let’s be real: there are few certainties in business. But I’m pretty sure that if you become too proficient at failure, you’re going to go bankrupt.

‘Fail fast, fail often’ is cited by many startups and innovators as both the pathway and attitude that will lead organizations to sustained success. Business failure is apparently a good thing, as long as it teaches you a lesson.

But I’m not buying it and neither should you. Say it out loud. I’ve been in many meetings where the group leader cites the mantra, “fail fast, fail often.” Consistently, however, they choke by the third f-word. Maybe it’s too much alliteration – but I think it’s something more.

In a column entitled ‘Why Silicon Valley’s ’Fail Fast’ Mantra Is Just Hype,’ leadership expert Rob Ashgar quotes one tech entrepreneur in frank terms: “Many people here do talk about embracing failure, but that’s usually just hype… many of them fear any kind of failure, and the pressure to succeed is so intense that some new businesses instead find themselves looking for shortcuts.”

I understand the meaning of fail fast. We can’t have people afraid to try new things because they might fail. And if you don’t try you’ll never succeed. But instead of embracing the negative, why not redefine the positive? Our goal is to win. So let’s redefine the goal so that we figure out how to succeed, not fail.

Why focus on the negative? A pro baseball player who hits the ball three times out of ten and retires with a .300 lifetime batting average is bound for the Hall of Fame. No one cares that he failed to get a hit seven times out of ten! In the new book Just Start: Take Action, Embrace Uncertainty, Create the Future, authors Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer provide fodder for rethinking our approach. “In the face of an unknown future, entrepreneurs act,” they write.

“More specifically, they:

  • Take a small, smart step
  • Pause to see what they learned by doing so; and
  • Build that learning in to what they do next.”

Entrepreneurs try, learn and refine. It’s not about failing fast or slow, it’s about learning how to win.

Clearly we need a new mantra. I propose: “Succeed fast, adjust or move on.”

Isn’t that what innovation’s all about? Understanding whether or not a new idea, product, service or process has legs? The faster we figure that out, the sooner we can decide to stay the course, make corrections, or pull the plug.

Notice that this mantra still embraces the word “fast.” Increasingly, we live in a world where businesses – both private and publicly-traded – are expected to perform for the short term.

Shareholders judge firms by their quarterly results; customers want to know why the newest product update is two days late. This high-speed scrutiny has shortened the time in which new business ideas must prove themselves. This means you must constantly be changing up your swing in order to get maximum whacks at the ball before your half of the inning is over.

In our new mantra, the phrase “succeed fast” is code for “know whether your business idea is going to succeed before anyone else does.” And really, that’s as it should be. Before you launch a new product or service, you study the market, do your product research, and anticipate where the potential challenges will come from. Given your comprehensive knowledge about your project, you can react to early market indicators make dispassionate decisions about whether to refine or pull the plug.

Of course, the “dispassionate” part is never easy. Every entrepreneur needs to fall a little bit in love with his or her idea. It’s part of the process. But just as investors often hold on to a falling stock too long, entrepreneurs can also sink too much time, energy and money into a doomed concept. That’s why doing research, modelling and making continuous refinements are so important. If you don’t have a predetermined success metric in place before you start, the temptation will be to simply hope and pray that better results are around the corner.

The ‘ready, fire, aim’ crowd may think that all of this discussion of the words “fail fast” versus “succeed fast” is just semantics. But I believe this debate is real, and the outcome crucial. For the record, I’m not much of a karma guy, but I have a fundamental belief that you usually get what you aim for. And I’m sure as heck not aiming to “fail often.”

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