What makes entrepreneurs entrepreneurial? A few years ago, a friend sent me the attached paper changed my life...The version I received had handwritten notes from Vinod Khosla, cofounder of SUN Microsystems and VC, saying First good paper Ive read (on entrepreneurship). I would have to agree. Some people feel comfortable starting things with a blank sheet of paper, most people dont. Why is this? As I wrote in LITTLE BETS, expert entrepreneurs do not get hung up on the idea. Instead, they focus like a laser on finding problems then use a type of logic that UVa Professor Saras Sarasvathy calls effectual reasoning. Sarasvathy has studied how leading entrepreneurs act and make decisions when launching new ventures and she has found that instead of trying to predict the future, they focus on WHO they know, WHAT they know, and WHY they are doing what they are doing. When I first read Sarasvathys paper, attached here, it changed the way I think. Instead of thinking of the idea, I started thinking about problems that fired me up. One example of that was that government seemed broken in Washington, so when Lenny Mendonca and I started prototyping ideas for solving citizens problems in new ways (what became Fuse Corps), the problem was clear. Then, Sarasvathy says that the WHO (you know or have access to) will shape all new ventures. Lenny and I reached out to many of our friends who shared similar passions, and that opened up key partnerships, especially with the Points of Light Institute, which incubated the venture. Thats effectual logic: effects come from the entrepreneur (s) being able to motivate people and resources towards larger aspirations. For any current or aspiring entrepreneur, the attached paper is awesome. Godspeed!
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 21:51:44 +0000
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