Think Like An Entrepreneur!

Think Like an Entrepreneur!
By Gary Ryan Blair

There was a time when being the biggest, most experienced corporate
kid on the block guaranteed success and dominance. However, in the
new economy, organizations that lack the commitment and capacity
for leveraging size and experience strategically will see these
attributes as vices instead of virtues.

The new economy will require an entrepreneurial mindset. Competition
will come from anywhere at anytime. Technology will empower smaller, nimbler competitors dramatically.

The days of sitting back, waiting, and depending on corporate size and reputation to attract business are effectively over.

To be clear—the relationship between size and entrepreneurial
behavior doesn't have to be an inverse one. People like Bill Gates
have already demonstrated convincingly that huge companies like
Microsoft can be as proactive and aggressive as the most
entrepreneurial start-up. In fact, entrepreneurial behavior can no
longer be the exclusive preserve of just the young start-up.

Everybody has to get in on the act!

Entrepreneurship is a bit like dieting: Everybody's in favor of it in
principle, but only a few have the intestinal fortitude to do what it
takes to reap the rewards.

In my view, the major source of the problem is cultural and is rooted in our fear of failure.

The new economy calls for a far more entrepreneurial corporate
culture, one where experimentation, risk taking, and even failure are
not only tolerated, but also actually celebrated. After all the only
real alternative to experimentation and risk is decay and decline.
The essence of risk is the possibility of failure.

Honor your errors. To advance requires a new frame. But the process
of going outside the conventional method is indistinguishable from
error.

Evolution can be thought of as systematic error management.

Scratch a successful entrepreneur and what you'll find is someone who failed a time or two or... get the idea?

The emerging rigors of the new economy leave us little choice. We
must experiment, and experimentation carries with it the near
certainty of at least occasional failure. In a truly entrepreneurial
culture, failure tends to be regarded as a learning opportunity, a
necessary pre-condition to eventual success. The status quo is simply
not a viable option any longer. You can stand still if you like, but
your competition certainly won't.

One other critical point about entrepreneurs. They are above all men
and women of action! Entrepreneurs instinctively understand the
importance of real-world experimentation, trial and error, and speed.
Experimentation, feedback, failure, learning, adjustment,
action—that's what successful entrepreneurship is all about.

Entrepreneurship, like innovation, is a profoundly relative concept.
At its core, it implies a willingness to risk challenging
conventional wisdom and prevailing approaches.

A company may employ you, but you work for yourself! Two defining
qualities of an entrepreneur are an appetite for risk and a strong
bias towards action. For many years, business conditions operated
strongly against the entrepreneur.

Size, stability, and industry experience were the only commodities recognized as having value in the business world; without them you could forget about making an impact. That's changing.

The business landscape of the new economy will be more hospitable to the entrepreneur than any we've seen before. The volatility and unpredictability of global competition have completely devalued most existing corporate currencies and virtues.

What good is size if your organization is too slow and muscle bound
to capitalize on new, fast-moving opportunities? What use is lengthy
industry experience if your most ferocious competitor is likely to
come at you from out of an entirely different sector? What's the
point of conducting exhaustive market surveys if the market changes
so fast they're obsolete before you've analyzed them?

Under these kinds of conditions, what counts is the willingness and
ability to take risks, get real-life feedback and react quickly. In
short, the ability to be entrepreneurial.

As a genuine entrepreneur, either inside an organization or
independent of one, you should prove to be ideally adapted to the
evolving imperatives of the new competitive environment.

Emboldened by its competitive dynamics and liberated by new
technologies, entrepreneurs will build not only bridges to the new economy but castles on the other shore!

Everything Counts!

Gary Ryan Blair is President of The GoalsGuy. A visionary and gifted conceptual thinker, Gary is highly regarded as a speaker, consultant, strategic planner, and coach to leading companies throughout the globe.

He helps business owners, corporate executives and sales professionals manage their time, set their priorities, and stay focused so they can achieve their goals, grow their business, and sustain a lasting competitive advantage. Learn more at http://www.personalstrategicplan.com

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