Maria Meyers of U.S.SourceLink offers a nice perspective on the different types of entrepreneurs in any given community and the different community resources they need to succeed.
Category Archives: Entrepreneurship
Innovation, Strategy, and your Innovation Strategy
What’s your innovation strategy?
The question often stumps executives, who tend to think innovation is something outside the normal work routines, not something that can and should be directed. Yet how much of your company’s strategic plan depends on innovation — on the development of new products, new processes, or (often) both — that will provide tomorrow’s competitive advantage? Continue reading
Flying blind over the valley of death
The valley of death is an hackneyed term used to describe where startups run out of money. This can be solved, early earlier-stage investors and policy-makers contend, by giving them more money. I’ve argued before this is misguided. The reason why is a cautionary tale to anyone leading a new venture.
Tolstoy on innovation
Ideas are overrated. I’ve said this before, but I just ran across this quote from Isaiah Berlin, describing Leo Tolstoy’s approach to understanding war and history. If we take his meaning to heart, we could all be better students of innovation.
Innovation and Choice
Innovation is about making the possible desirable and the desirable possible. But which direction innovation takes depends in large part on what choices we have when it comes to expressing those desires and who wants to control those choices. Continue reading
MicroMidas in the news
The SacBee today has a nice description of MicroMidas, UCD and Child Family Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship alum: Micromidas plans to turn cardboard into oil substitute.
Where innovation comes from…
A recent Kauffman report offers new and valuable insights into where venture-driven growth comes from. Literally. Not from what attributes of social media founders or which San Francisco coffee shops, but rather which sectors of the economy and which regions of the country. The findings are surprising and important for entrepreneurs thinking of starting a business, and policymakers thinking of helping them.
Careful what you wish for: Entrepreneurial policies and startups
WSJ had a nice section recently on understanding entrepreneurs, Why Washington Has It Wrong on Small Business. In it, Professor Aaron Chatterji from Duke talks about how job growth comes from high-growth, not low-growth startups (companies younger than 5 years old). This insight mistakes hindsight for foresight but, more importantly, it puts the entrepreneurial cart before the horse.
Who Built What?
The catch phrase of the Republican National Convention, “We Built It,” was a staged response to a strategically clipped quote from a speech by President Obama. As part of the government versus business debate, it has hopefully run its course. But as a lesson on innovation, it feels like a missed opportunity.
Five words that kill innovation
I submit for your consideration, five words that I'm beginning to think kill innovation in organizations. Use them at your own peril.
Andrew Hargadon 